كيف غير السكر العالم؟ : قصة عن السحر، التوابل، العبودية، الحرية، والعلم

by Marc Aronson, Marina Budhos, مارك أرونسون

When this award-winning husband-and-wife team discovered that they each had sugar in their family history, they were inspired to trace the globe-spanning story of the sweet substance and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives. The trail ran like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe’s Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar was the substance that drove the bloody slave trade and caused the loss of countless lives but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. With songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Time line, source notes, bibliography, index.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Teen, Historical, School, World History, Middle Grade

143 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2010

About the author

Aronson has won many awards for his books for young readers and has a doctorate in American history. His lectures cover educational topics such as mysteries and controversies in American history, teenagers and their reading, the literary passions of boys, and always leave audiences asking for more.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/marcar...

Reviews

[HAMiD · Rating 3 out of 5]

خب نمی شد به اینجا رسید و یاد نکرد از اسمعیل بخشی و اون بغض صداش که عصاره ی همه ی بردگی هاست. لازم نبود این همه راه رو بریم تا کرانه های برزیل و باربادوس و دومینیکن! همین جا همین پایین تر، نیشکر هفت تپه؛ اون ورِ چغازنبیل
هِی از بغض

شنیدنش ابدن پیشنهاد نمی شود
https://soundcloud.com/moh_5en/for-es...

[Becky B · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book up thinking, "Wow, this should be a really good book." And I believe it really could have been, but sadly it wasn't. In fact, it had some rather fatal flaws to the point that I am only going to recommend to teachers in our school they use certain sections and not the whole thing.

The parts I did think were really good and will recommend to teachers are the parts on what life was like on a sugar plantation and statistics about slavery. In fact, considering that that was the main purpose of writing this book, maybe the authors should have stuck to just that part. These parts had interesting (and sometimes eye opening) statistics on slavery, good examples from a variety of locations where plantations were set up, and pictures/drawings to augment them. Also, some parts on the abolitionist movements were good.

My list of problems with this book and why I don't think it is good educational material is a little lengthy, so I will hide it as a spoiler and you can view it if you are really interested. Suffice it to say, most of the problems were with organization/presentation, editorial issues, and feeling like they really misleadingly stretched sugar being the main cause of some major historical events. As I read I started taking notes because so many things were driving me crazy. At times, I felt the urge to dig out a red pen and mark it up to send it back to a student to be revised. Here they are in the order I wrote them down:

1) It doesn’t bode well when the authors jump back and forth between second and third person narrative in the introduction. Sometimes Marc refers to family members as family members, and sometimes he talks about them like he is an unrelated narrator. It would be less confusing if he would just stick with calling people according to their relationship to himself.

2) The authors keep jumping back and forth between generations and centuries. First, in the prologue, especially Marina’s prologue…she goes from great-grandfather to British India to her grandmother to her father, then back to her great-grandfather, grandmother etc…chronological order from the start would have been easier on the reader.
Second time in Part One, it goes from 326 BC to 510 BC to 1100 AD to 1500-900 BC to 400-500 AD to 600 AD to 1280 AD to 1100 AD to 400 AD….
And later on in part one 1100 AD to 1500 AD to 1200 AD to 1300 AD to 1095 AD
In part 2 p.32 -and this one I think could have been fixed by a simple rearrangement of the sentences- “In just over one hundred years, between 1701 and 1810, 252,500 enslaved Africans were brought to Barbados….The English then set out to conquer more sugar islands, starting with Jamaica, which they took from Spain in 1665.”
I understand that sometimes you have to backtrack to introduce a new topic, like when they introduce the topic of tea in the 2nd Part, but the previous sections weren’t so clearly different.
They say they tried this stuff out on kids in NY city schools but I wonder in just what form. As it is written, I think middle school students would find this part tough to follow unless you made them make a timeline.

3) I felt like a lot of the Age of Honey stuff was speculative but they presented it as fact to kids. At one point they say that North America didn’t have bees and then they say the colonists just needed to hollow out trees to keep the bees...but if there were no bees where did they come from? Did they spontaneously appear once a tree was hollowed out? What do you expect a middle schooler to think? I actually did my own research and found that this part was just poorly and misleadingly written. What they should have said is that there were no native honey bees in North America and European settlers brought them with them. There are over 4,000 species of bees native to North America. But if a middle schooler trusts these authors he is going to go home and tell his parents there were no bees at all in America before the colonists came.

4) On p.13 they included a drawing showing an elephant plowing a field in India and the caption says “Whether elephants actually pulled plows this way or a visiting artist just imagined that is unclear.” Umm, this is where I got some serious doubts about their research skills and how much they actually dug into Asian history. I live in Southeast Asia, and I can tell you with very little doubt that they used elephants to plow like that in the 1850s because they still do it that way today in parts of SE Asia! Why did they put a disclaimer on that picture but not tell kids that parts of their other research was just to the best of their knowledge???

5) On p. 15-16 The whole part on “Today we generally think of sweet things as completely different from salty ones…” makes it seem like all of modern Earth thinks this way and anyone who doesn’t is ancient. This is an extremely narrow-minded North American view of taste and the authors fail to acknowledge this at all. Mixing of flavors is a highly varied cultural aspect that has little to do with "ancient" or "modern." In fact, pretty much every other part of the world apart from North America does not like purely sweet things. Even European sweets are more mild, and many cultures, like those in the East believe the best meals blend a variety of flavors...just like the ancient Muslims. For a book that claims to tell how sugar changed the entire world, it seems to take a view narrow view.

6) They only cite one source as saying that the Chinese learned how to make white sugar from the Egyptians. Wouldn’t you think that if the authors are writing a book on sugar and acknowledge a culture had known how to make brown sugar for over a thousand years it would have deserved some more research??

7) Why in the world did they quote a physician from the 1500s when talking about sugar at the Champagne Fairs when they then tell us the Champagne Fairs stopped in the 1300s?

8) On p. 26 they speculate about whether or not sugar cane is really bad after 48 hours or not. In all of their research did they really not find out or even test for themselves whether sugar can was good after 48 hours? Why the speculation? Again, made me wonder about the research put in.

9)A bit strong p. 36??? “The painstaking work had just one aim: to plant a crop that would end up taking the life of every worker who touched it.” I don't think a business man's aim was to kill all of his workers, and that may not have been exactly what the authors meant, but if not, they should have reworded this statement.

10) They did not clarify for the reader that burning could be done before planting AND/OR before harvest p.38. It probably will confuse kids because the booklet they include after p. 38 says they burn the field before seeding and the text says they do it after.

11) I think they over-simplified things by saying sugar was THE reason that England became one of the first industrialized nations.

12) Was sugar the tie between slavery and freedom, or was it also due to the Enlightenment and increase in communication and transportation??? I think they would have been better off saying that sugar was linked into the freedom process, not necessarily the cause.

13) How in the world can they talk about the abolitionist movement in England and not mention William Wilberforce except one little quote?! Yes, Clarkson was important but Wilberforce was the voice in Parliament. This is like mentioning the Declaration of Independence and mentioning Madison’s work on it but not Jefferson, and then only as a sidebar and not mentioning that he was the main voice in the Continental Congress. I repeatedly find their portrayal of history as rather lopsided.

14) They actually dared to say that Napoleon only offered Jefferson the Louisiana Purchase –which they think should be called the Sugar Purchase- because of Haiti’s gaining independence!!! Again, I think they are reaching. Napoleon at this time had stretched himself too thin in many areas and needed the money. He backed off and then planned to spread out his attack beyond Europe once he got to Britain. Haiti was just a small and rather distant part of his problems.

15) The beginning of Part 4 is mostly a repeat of the events at the end of Part 3. They really didn't need to repeat them.

16) They keep saying “this is where Marc’s family comes in…” in Part 4, but then they don’t really tell anything further about his family.

17) On p. 123 they say, “But never before had non-violence been employed for a mass movement.” Ok, what about Jesus’ teaching to his followers and the practices employed by 1st century Christians that were non-violent. And in Part 3 didn't they just talk about non-violent methods being employed by the abolitionists in Britain...boycotting sugar, spreading pamphlets, holding lectures, etc? That would be non-violent. (On the next page they even compare some of Ghandi’s actions to the abolitionists in Britain...so they acknowledge it came before but they still make that statement?!)

18) “Only sugar – the sweetness we all crave – could drive people to be so cruel, and to combat all forms of cruelty.” Again, reaching and a bit of a stretch. War over land and riches can do both.

19) I found the portrayal of slave owners throughout the book as very stereotypical. They did not examine or explore a single example of a slave owner who was kind or considerate or allowed his slaves to have education. Were most of them bad? Yes. But were all of them horrible, blood-thirsty murderers. I don’t think that is fair. You can write a book about slavery and not endanger the point you want to get across by including a couple exceptions, and it usually strengthens your argument because then your reader knows you have explored all aspects.

So, yes, very disappointing. I feel like if this book were sent back to be further researched, rewritten and edited it could very well be able to come back a good resource for schools. Note added May 2019: I feel like I should add that I've read several other things by Aronson now and really liked them. This seemed to be an exception rather than the rule.

[عبدالرحمن عقاب · Rating 2 out of 5]

عنوانٌ تجاري. ومحتوى متوسط الجودة.
في عالمٍ شديد التركيب والتعقيد، مثل الذي نعيش فيه، كلّ شيءٌ قادر على تغيير العالم. السكّر والملح، الكاكاو والقهوة، النفط والغاز، اليورانيوم والنحاس، والانترنت والتلفزيون أو التلفون..والقائمة تطول ولا تنتهي!
وإن كان السكّر قد أشعل نار الاستعمار والاستعباد، ثمّ أشعل نار الحروب والثورات، فإنّ سواه فعل ذلك ولكن بدرجاتٍ متفاوتة. فالعقل الرأسمالي الذي يستغلّ ما زال هو المسيطر، وما زال الاستهلاك هو المحرّك للإنتاج والجشع على السواء.
الكتاب صغير الحجم، كثير التشتّت والاستطراد على صغره. وقد افتقد -برأيي- للعمق والإحاطة اللذان كنت أرجوهما.

[Mike Mullin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. I learned more from this book than some five times its length, and it changed the way I think about sugar, industrialization, and the history of slavery.

[Sesana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be the first YA history book that I've read that feels like an adult history book. The content and writing style don't feel like they've been pitched down at all. One of the very few things that make it obviously YA is the page length (roughly 130 pages of content). Aronson and Budhos keep their focus fairly tight, on the human cost of growing sugarcane, which lets them give a decently fleshed out history even at that length. There are a lot of photos and illustrations, chosen to give a good visual sense of what growing sugarcane was and is like. And I like that the author included modern parallels as they went, which makes it all feel that much more relevant.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

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'17

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although those of us who are addicted to the sweet taste of sugar might agree with the book's title, the authors make it clear that sugar, indeed, changed the world in many ways. Motivated to tell the story of sugar because of its importance in their own families, they trace its history back to India where it was used in religious rites and on to its being transported in the form of sugar cane to the New World by explorer Christopher Columbus. As humans hungered for more sweet things, the demand for sugar rose, as did the need for cheap labor. Subsequently, arguing that it was sugar and not cotton or tobacco that fed the need for slaves, the authors describe the hellish conditions under which slaves worked on the sugar plantations. Later chapters describe the revolts that led to freedom for the slaves on Saint Domingue and later in India. As sugar beets began to be used to sweeten foods, there was less need for sugar cane. Accompanied by detailed photographs and illustrations as well as abundant references, this provocative book prompts much reflection and questioning about humans' inhumanity to one another as well as what motivates humans to behave as they do. Teen readers will be especially interested in learning about the protest movements that encouraged a boycott of sugar harvested through the labor of slaves.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short-listed for ALA's YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction and a finalist for L.A. Times Book Review Young Adult Literature Prize, this is a substantial enough book that it provides an excellent blueprint for changing the narrative in history class. Developed in conjunction with NYC 5th grade teachers over the course of two summers it explains how the study of sugar is expansive and sweeping enough to really tell the story about the struggle for freedom - from the shores of Africa to the revolutions around the world. Sugar something so commonplace revolutionized and explains many of the concepts of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than teaching history in units on the American Revolution, slavery, the Industrial Revolution etc., here is an opportunity that is accessible to students to understand history as a story. The causes of freedom for some were at the expense of slavery for others - the story of sugar explains it so much better than the isolated units on colonialism in the Americas. There are a tremendous number of resources available that can make this a cross-discipline unit (including the science of candy, jazz and sugar, longitude and latitude, and sugar as a plot device).

[Mariah Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was excellent. It was written by a husband and wife after they learned of their different, yet connected, ancestries.

From the Age of Honey to the Age of Sugar and then to the Age of Science, you’re going to go on a journey (not necessarily pleasant) from New Guinea to India, Persia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Azores, and then via Columbus—the New World. From there, you go from slaves to “indentured servants” on sugar plantations which brought men and women from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Portugal, India, and Spain. You learn how Hawaii became to be so culturally diverse before it was even a state, a lot about how sugar shaped Haiti, and how figures like Thomas Jefferson, Ghandi, Toussaint, and more had roles in the sugar game.

It was truly fascinating. Highly recommend. I’m adding it to my son’s Year 8.

[Jihan Niazy · Rating 4 out of 5]

السكر وضع الملايين من الناس فى حركة مستمرة فى جميع أنحاء العالم كعبيد مقيدين فى سلاسل وعددا قليلا منهم كباحثين عن ثرواتهم

[Mark Flowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Marc Aronson to death (his blog on SLJ, for example, is tremendous), and there was a lot to love about this book, but I'm not giving it five stars for a couple of reasons.

1) Just about everything you can think of has had a book written about how it "changed the world": guns, oil, the crucifixion, bananas, Christopher Columbus, tea, Nixon and Mao, flowers, greenpeace, gunpowder, cars, radar, the Model T, the birth control pill, the theory of relativity, Mikhail Gorbachev, and of course cod. (those are just books in the last few years with the words "changed the world" in the title."

I'm not denying that all of these things changed the world, but the conceit is clearly getting a little old. But that's not event the problem I had with Aronson. When I saw his title, I thought to myself - "sugar! now there's something that really did change the world" (seriously). For all sorts of reasons, I'm fascinated by sugar and its role in human affairs. So, the real problem I had with Aronson's book was that it didn't make the case of world-changingness clear enough. His point seemed to be that sugar was in large part responsible for the slave trade, and hence colonization, and later liberation. But he never really very clearly articulated this.

2) Related to point 1) was that he could have (in my view, should have) gone into much more detail about other ways in which sugar changed the world. I would have liked to have seen him spend a little more time on the scientific basis for the human urge for sugar, and the modern quest to create sugar without calories and so and and so forth, to show the ways in which the drive for sugar has been one of the most important urges in human history from the beginning to the present, not merely during the years of exploration and colonization, which his book focuses on.

3) He wasted too space making points that he could have expected his reader to know--recapitulating the horrors of the slave trade and work as a slave (which, one would hope most students learn about already in school), for example--rather than making clear the argument he was trying to put forth: about how sugar was much more important to slavery than cotton, and that South American slavery was much more extensive than North American, etc.

I don't mean for this to be a negative review: the positives in this book are manifold, and I think everyone should read it. I just wanted to explain why I felt it was less than the five-star YA/Children's nonfiction book that it clearly was aiming for, and might have been.

[Adam Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

SCtW is my kind of history book. Relatively uninterested in kings and politicians, this is more of a Howard Zinn-style people’s history, albeit one which far more gently grinds its axe. Christopher Columbus gets mentioned, for example, on three separate pages. The longest passage by far is only fifty-seven words. Readers will learn far more about Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved African taken to Barbados to work in sugar, or even Thomas Thistlewood, a white overseer who wrote with a kind of nauseating jocularity about the cruelties he inflicted on his charges. They’ll also learn about the university of Jundi Shapur, which flourished fifteen hundred years ago in what is now Iran and which sounds so wondrous I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. They’ll learn that the “whitest and purest” sugar of the ancient world came from Egypt of all places. Suddenly those sugar cube pyramids we all built in grade school are elevated above the level of busywork to some kind of totemic historical metaphor.
It would be easy to call this a bitter book about a sweet spice, and there are unquestionably some difficult truths in Sugar Changed the World. There were also, for me, odd moments of pride–it was interesting to discover that the slave trade was focused so heavily in the Caribbean and South America, for example, and when I learned that only four percent of the slaves taken from Africa ended up in North America, and that these slaves had a comparatively low death rate, I chanted the feeblest U-S-A of my life. So why did I come away from this book inspired? A section on Gandhi didn’t hurt. Likewise sections on new (to me) heroes like the Haitian leader Toussaint, and English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, a contemporary of William Wilberforce. This is an ultimately hopeful book, and I hope it finds a place in the classroom.
Excellent period illustrations and photos abound, including sample pages from a grim old children’s picture book that painstakingly details how sugar got from the West Indies to your sweet shop, and unintentionally details everything that was wrong about the Victorians. The back matter of SCtW contains a great set of appendices that include, among other things, a timeline, a web guide to additional images, and an essay aimed at parents and teachers that explains how the book was researched.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ambitious and meticulously researched non-fiction book about how the sugar trade impacted many aspects of our world, from ancient times to the present. The book begins with a short prologue from both authors explaining how they came to write the book and how sugar and their family histories came together. This is a wonderful way to begin a book of non-fiction, as the personal aspect of the story immediately engages the reader and makes them want to continue reading. The authors then take us from the earliest historical records documenting the use of sugar, through the terrifying brutality of the sugar trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, and finally to how sugar is used in the modern era. In the style of science historian James Burke, the authors bring together many seemingly unconnected threads and demonstrate how the use and production of sugar impacted almost every aspect of society, changing social, political and economic values. The element of the sugar trade that had the greatest impact on human history, was, of course, slavery. The authors demonstrate that human rights ideals were born in the bloody hell of sugar plantations. The authors also make a point to make connections between past and present. For example, they compare slaves toiling on plantations to workers today laboring in third world sweatshops to provide cheap apparel.

I’m always entranced by how many connected threads we find in history and the authors make a convincing case for how sugar is interwoven into our lives and has been for centuries. I wonder, though, if historical accuracy is sometimes sacrificed to weave all these disparate threads together. But the authors take pains to document all their historical research, even explaining how they went about conducting their research. There are valuable resources at the end of the book, including a detailed account of notes and sources.

The book is beautifully presented, with wonderful images and a narrative that is compelling.

[Abdulkhalek Zohbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

سكر غير العالم.
عن هذا العنصر البسيط اللذي نستخدمه يوميًا في حياتنا كان السبب لهجرة الكثير من الناس واشعال الكثير من الثورات والكفاح من أجل الحرية.
تكلم بإيجاز عن حقبتين الأولى قبل الميلاد إكتشاف السكر وكيف انتقل من مكان إلى أخر على هذا الكوكب والحقبة الثانية من أواخر القرن السابع عشر إلى العشرون عن دور السكر بأقتصاد البلدان وانشاء الحروب ... مع ذكر طفيف لبعض حقبات القرون الوسطى لكن ماجذبني هو ذكر أسماء شخصيات مرموقة ساهمت بنهضة مصطلح حقوق الإنسان وكيف السكر قد يكون عنصرًا أساسيًا بإقتصاد دولة بأكملها ... جمع هذا الكتاب بحب الجغرافيا، التاريخ، العلوم، الرياضيات، الإقتصاد، السياسة، الإجتماع، والفن والأدب. لتنهيه وتشعر بأنه كتاب قد أخذك بروحك عبر الزمان والمكان والكثييير من الثقافات.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this photo-essay but felt disappointed almost from the start. Instead of the history of sugar and it's impact on the world in ALL things what I read came off as an anti-slavery lecture. While I did learn many fascinating tidbits throughout the text I was just as often left hanging when a thread was dropped.

I applaud Aronson and Budhos for tackling this project for teens and admire the overall look of the book. The photos, illustrations, and additional sources were well-placed and valuable.

[Kevin Keating · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty interesting book on the effect that sugar has had upon the world. I like the way they tied the revolutions (french, American and Haitian) into the story. Also a nice personal touch to their history. Both authors had ancestors involved in the trade in different parts of the world. Informative.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. I kept getting distracted and losing my place because I was thinking about cookies.

[Reem Adas · Rating 5 out of 5]

كما السحر والعلم فعل السكر

[Micah Hales · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fascinating! It’s a very informative and fast-paced read about how sugar cane influenced world history and left a lasting mark on almost every continent of the world. I highly recommend it.

[Zahraa Aljubaili · Rating 3 out of 5]

النبذة:
يحمل السكر طعماً لذيذاً نريده جميعاً،وحلاوة جعلت الناس في جميع أنحاء الأرض على استعداد للقيام بأي شيء للحصول على شيء منها.
فقد خلق اكتشاف السكر حالة من الجوع، وحاجة انتقلت من زاوية من العالم إلى أخرى،ناقلة ذات البؤس والدمار الأكثر فظاعة ولكنها خلقت بعد ذلك معظم الأفكار الملهمة للحرية..
فالسكر غيّر العالم..ولكن كيف غيره؟!هذا ماسنعرفه
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الملخص:
بدايةً مع قصة تأليف الكتاب ومؤلفيه..مع نبذة عن عصر العسل.
ومن ثم الى أربع فصول تم تقسيمها كالتالي:
الفصل الأول:من السحر إلى التوابل:
يتم الحديث فيه عن السكر وأهميته وكيفية اكتشافه واستثماره وطرق استخدامه سابقاً في الطعام والطب والتعبّد والسحر ومظاهر الثراء..وعلاقته بالتوابل.
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الفصل الثاني:الجحيم:
التغييرات السياسية والاجتماعية والفكرية والمادية التي تسبب السكر فيها بظهور العبودية وأسواق الرق والثورات الأمريكية والفرنسية وغيرها.
مشاعر عمّال السكر ومعاناتهم وطرق تعذيبهم.
طرق عصر السكر واعادة تحويله الى بلورات"عملية تصنيعه وضوابطها".
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الفصل الثالث:الحرية:
ظهور مرحلة النضال والحرية والمطالبة بالمساواة بين العمال العبيد وملاّك المزارع. وقيام الثورة الصناعية في انجلترا وفرنسا وغيرها.
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الفصل الرابع:العودة الى قصصنا:
عمال جدد،سكر جديد،نظام جديد:
يضم عدد من القصص التي رويت على لسان عمال السكر..وممن عاش بزمن العبودية.
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رأيي الشخصي:
يُجيب هذا الكتاب على أهم سؤالين تاريخيين رئيسين:
1- ماعلاقة السكر بالعبودية والنضال من أجل الحرية؟
2-كيف تورط السكر والاستعباد في ولادة الثورة الصناعية؟وكيف بامكان نظرة واحدة عن السكر والعبودية ان تغير الطريقة التي نرى بها أفكار الحرية واختراع أساليب جديدة للعمل وأنواع جديدة من الآلات؟.
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لم أكن أتوقع بأن خلف تلك الحبيبات الصغيرة اللامعة ذات المذاق الحلو حكاية حزينة وقصص مليئة بالمعاناة والتضحيات..والذل والفساد وتسلط الانسان على غيره.
وأن بسبب السكر قد توسعت تجارة الرق وبالمقابل تعززت الحرية وقيمها الانسانية.
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أعجبني الكتاب لأن به الكثير من المعلومات والحقائق والأحداث التاريخية والثقافية التي لم أكن أعرفها مسبقاً..والتي تم سردها باسلوب سهل وبتسلسل بسيط.
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وأيضاً احتوى الكتاب على عدد من الصور والرسومات القديمة والنادرة عن مزارع السكر والعبيد وطرق زراعة وحصاد قصب السكر وتصنيعه.
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كانت الرحلة مثيرة وثرية ومتتعة برفقة هذا الكتاب.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sugar is something we take for granted. It is always available at the store. It isn't very expensive. We can add it to anything we want and it is in a lot of what we eat. And there are alternatives to regular brown or white sugar. This was not always the case. Sugar was an unknown until around a thousand years ago. However, once people got a taste of it they wanted more. It started out as a spice added to foods like any other spice, but then it separated itself from others and became a sweetener. As the demand for sugar grew, production also had to grow. Huge sugar plantations sprouted up throughout the Caribbean and South America. Millions of slaves were brought from Africa to work in the brutal plantations. More slaves actually than were brought to America. Sugar was a time sensitive crop the required back-breaking labor, hot fires, and lots of slaves.

This book starts with the stories of how Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos were connected to sugar and how they decided to write this book. Then we go into the history of sugar and the sugar/slavery connections. Next we see how sugar helped shape the world and abolish slavery. France, England, America, the Caribbean, India, Africa, Asia: slavery and sugar helped mold these places into what they are today. Slavery was abolished in many countries because of the sugar slaves. Gandhi started his peaceful resistance movement because of sugar slaves. It is amazing how many connections you can draw throughout history and the world all because of sugar. Aronson and Budhos did an excellent job highlighting these connection and writing a very readable nonfiction book.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I just typed a four-paragraph review, I hit backspace, and it is all gone. I want to punch this computer.

This book was good. It was well-written, although I don't feel that it would be interesting to any child. For that reason, I really would only recommend this to teachers. I can see myself using this in the classroom, at least parts of it. I learned a LOT, and it was extremely depressing. It was so disheartening to learn about how people can convince themselves to treat others as less than human. I want to say that I'm happy I live in the world I do today - but the immigration law in Arizona is eerily familiar to the things that governments enacted in the 1800s. Like the book said, Americans are all about taking in migrant workers to do crappy jobs and get paid nothing, but allow them to live here? NO WAY! Good lord. Have we made no progress in 200 years? I think that answer is clear.

To move away from my tangent... I will start another! I learned in this book that in 1807, on my birthday, the British Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British Empire! That didn't mean that slavery was over at that point, but I guess it was a step in the right direction at that time.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of history book I love to read! The authors offer a sweeping look at the impact sugar has had upon global history. They begin with intriguing personal stories of how sugar figures prominently in each of their family histories, the impetus for their writing the book. They explore their family connections later in the text. The authors pack an astonishing amount of information in an approximately 160-page text but they never overwhelm the reader and craft it into a compelling, insightful, and provocative narrative. The book explores the impact sugar has had upon colonialism, global trade, migration, slavery, revolutions, culinary arts, production and refinement, religious practice, and more. Among the abundant illustrations and maps, particulary impressive are those depicting plantation life and work. Educators will appreciate the concluding essay in which the authors explain their research and writing processes. This is a book that respects its intended audience. A first-rate example of exceptional nonfiction for young people.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sugar has evolved over time from a substance that was hard and costly to obtain to a substance that is massively over consumed in our daily lives. This is the story of how that changed and how sugar dictated the slave trade, and many revolutions. Sugar has caused many a bloody battle, and countless lives were lost because of it. This book was very informative about many aspects of American, European, and African histories. it takes the evolution of an industry in a fairly straightforward timeline that allows the readers to travel through history. Not only does the sugar trade change tremendously, but so do the social, economical, and political views of different cultures around the world. It's amazing to me how much cause and effect comes into play when we talk about royalty wanting to sweeten their tea! Drawings and photographs are sprinkled throughout the story, adding another dimension to the tale. The history of the sugar trade across the world is not only exciting, but heartbreaking, complicated, and at times completely unbelievable. Well done!

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is chilling even with the light touch, for the youths. I told Curt that it was a juvenile history title and he tried to get rid of it even though he'd already been quoting it for his own research. I love YA history. It makes everything so succinct.

Budhos, who I keep reading, and Aronson, tell their family stories as sidebars to the brutal history of sugar and the nightmares that are its cause and effect. But flavors it flavors tea.. There are longer books about why the Europeans got so rich and how humans can do the worst imaginable things to each other, but this is a good introduction.

[Anastasia Tuckness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this years ago (like probably in 2011) and it really changed the way I look at history and sugar. Very highly recommended. I often think about using it for Battle, but a coworker who also read it says it's too tough--there are really really hard sections about the horrible things people went through on these plantations. So--read it knowing your eyes will be opened to some horror as you come to a better understanding of humanity and history, specifically colonialism's greed. There is a good deal of science in here as well which I enjoyed.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This darker tale by Aronson and Budhos weaves the story of the Age of Honey and the Age of Sugar and how all of it was created on the backs of slaves from many areas including Africa and India, China and Guyana. It's about the innovation of creating sugars from beets and corn. It's about the magic of sugar's discovery.

But no matter what, it details both personal and historical significance to the authors in bringing this story to light. The book is both informative and frustrating based on the decisions and politics of both money and trade.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting subject, and well-written from a certain perspective, but a trifle shallow. The language is not unlike that of a textbook: certain story arcs are brought up, and then completely unexplored. Some of this could be attempts to stay within the scope of their main theme, but my sense is that it's because they're writing for a 5th Grade audience.

I would, however, recommend it for that audience.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anecdotal history of sugar that the authors make personal by adding their own family stories. A rich, rewarding read that tells the human story of sugar through narratives of the people whose lives were shaped by it for better or for worse. Absolutely deserving of it's four starred reviews, I wish I hadn't waited so long to read it.

[باسمة العنزي · Rating 3 out of 5]

لقد أنتج العمل الأكثر وحشية الطعم الحلو للسكر. رحلة سريعة مليئة بالمعلومات التاريخية والأماكن، كتاب يشبه كتب التاريخ المدرسية أسلوب مباشر وبسيط متضمنا العديد من الصور بالأبيض والأسود
بالمجمل انهيته في يومين مع حصيلة من المعلومات القيمة