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    Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
    Unavailable
    Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
    Unavailable
    Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
    Audiobook10 hours

    Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity

    Written by James Walvin

    Narrated by Roger Davis

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The modern successor to Sweetness and Power, James Walvin's Sugar is a rich and engaging work on a topic that continues to change our world.

    How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating yet again into the cause of a global health epidemic?

    Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous and an everyday necessity. Less than fifty years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem. And yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco. While sugar consumption remains higher than ever—in some countries as high as 100lbs per head per year—some advertisements even proudly proclaim that their product contains no sugar.

    How did sugar grow from prize to pariah? Acclaimed historian James Walvin looks at the history of our collective sweet tooth, beginning with the sugar grown by enslaved people who had been uprooted and shipped vast distances to undertake the grueling labor on plantations. The combination of sugar and slavery would transform the tastes of the Western world.

    Masterfully insightful and probing, James Walvin reveals the relationship between society and sweetness over the past two centuries—and how it explains our conflicted relationship with sugar today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9780525633228
    Unavailable
    Sugar: The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
    Author

    James Walvin

    James Walvin is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of York. He has published widely on slavery and modern social history. His most recent book is A World Transformed: Slavery in the Americas and the Origins of Global Power.

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