Download or read book Tastes of Paradise written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1993-06-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the extravagant use of pepper in the Middle Ages to the Protestant bourgeoisie's love of coffee to the reason why fashionable Europeans stopped sniffing tobacco and starting smoking it, Schivelbusch looks at how the appetite for pleasure transformed the social structure of the Old World. Illustrations.
Download or read book Dangerous Tastes written by Andrew Dalby and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dangerous Tastes offers a fresh perspective on these exotic substances and the roles they have played over the centuries. The author shows how each region became part of a worldwide network of trade - with local consequences ranging from disaster to triumph."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Disenchanted Night written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995-12-20 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wolfgang Schivelbusch tells the story of the development of artificial light in the nineteenth century. Not simply a history of a technology, Disenchanted Night reveals the ways that the technology of artificial illumination helped forge modern consciousness. In his strikingly illustrated and lively narrative, Schivelbusch discusses a range of subjects including the political symbolism of streetlamps, the rise of nightlife and the shopwindow, and the importance of the salon in bourgeois culture.
Download or read book A Brief History of Drugs written by Antonio Escohotado and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-05-01 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear-eyed look at the instrumental role drugs have played in our cultural, social, and spiritual development. • First American publication of the surprising European bestseller. • Examines everything from the ancient use of ergot and datura to the modern phenomenon of "designer" drugs such as Ecstasy and crack cocaine. From remotest antiquity to the present era of designer drugs and interdiction, drugs have played a prominent role in the cultural, spiritual, and social development of civilizations. Antonio Escohotado demonstrates how the history of drugs illuminates the history of humanity as he explores the long relationship between mankind and mind-altering substances. Hemp, for example, has been used in India since time immemorial to stimulate mental agility and sexual prowess. Aristotle's disciple Theophrastus testifies to the use of datura by the ancient Greeks and further evidence links the rites at Eleusis to the ingestion of a hallucinogen. Similar examples can be found in cultures as diverse as the Celts, the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, and other indigenous peoples around the world. Professor Escohotado also looks at the present-day differences that exist between the more drug-tolerant societies like Holland and Switzerland and countries advocating complete repression of these substances. The author provides a comprehensive analysis of the enormous social costs of the drug war that is coming under increasing fire from all levels of society. Professor Escohotado's work demonstrates that drugs have always existed and been used by societies throughout the world and the contribution they have made to humanity's development has been enormous. The choice we face today is to teach people how to use them correctly or to continue to indiscriminately demonize them. "Just say no," the author says, is not an option. Just say "know" is. Antonio Escohotado is a professor of philosophy and social science methodology at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain. He travels widely, offering lectures and seminars on the subject of drugs and history.
Download or read book Birds of Paradise written by Anne Malcom and published by Anne Malcom. This book was released on 2021-03-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He collected beautiful things. Rare things. Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor. The problem was I wasn't beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being. He came to kill me. That was his business. Death. He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I'd created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things. I hated him. I still hate him. But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I'd stay dead. In all of my hideous splendor. Because my murderer can only possess dead things. And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.
Download or read book The Culture of Defeat written by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on three seminal cases of military defeat--the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I--Wolfgang Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural responses of vanquished nations to the experience of loss on the battlefield. Drawing on reactions from every level of society, Schivelbusch charts the narratives defeated nations construct and finds remarkable similarities across cultures. Eloquently and vibrantly told, The Culture of Defeat is a brilliant and provocative tour de force of history.
Download or read book Bobos in Paradise written by David Brooks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.
Download or read book Faith Reason and the Plague in Seventeenth century Tuscany written by Carlo M. Cipolla and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1981 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recreates the struggles within plague-stricken Italy, relating events that led to a confrontation between the advocates of science and the followers of faith.
Download or read book Sweetness and Power written by Sidney W. Mintz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1986-08-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book Criminal Paradise written by Steven M. Thomas and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature of larceny welcomes a newcomer with some serious chops, as Steven M. Thomas muscles his way to a place at the table–elbow-to-elbow with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen–courtesy of a harrowing, hilarious, two-fisted, hard-boiled thriller that’s pure heaven for anyone who loves a hell of a crime novel. Robert Rivers is a crook. No excuses, no apologies. Breaking the law is his calling, crime is his rush, capers his reason for getting up in the morning and staying up late at night. But he’s a thief with honor, plotting and pulling off carefully choreographed heists where no shots are fired, no blood is spilled, and nobody gets hurt . . . except in the wallet. After a brief stint behind bars back in the day, he’s managed to carve out a comfortable existence, cheerfully plundering the sunny Southern California community whose streets he tools in the tweaked-out Cadillac DeVille that’s his pride and joy. But now Rob (whose name has become ironic) is pushing forty, and–like his trusty partner, Switch, who’s got a pregnant girlfriend and a hefty stash of loot–he’s thinking about quitting the game. But then he and Switch, pulling their latest Butch and Sundance, score a payday that could end up costing them plenty. Inside a strongbox packed with greenbacks rests a disturbing black-and-white photo of a beautiful young girl, eyes full of fear as naked as she is. It’s an image that Rob can’t shake, and a wake-up call: There are rules even he won’t break. It’s also his one-way ticket into the underbelly of the underworld–a lethal landscape of sex slaves, sadistic psychopaths, and sawed-off shotguns, where honor is for fools, and trust is for suckers, where very bad people do even worse things and nice guys don’t finish at all. They just get finished off. With its alluring setting, quirky characters, and restrained and subtle prose, Criminal Paradise has something for every thriller fan. And with sharp natural instincts and writing skills as serious as his humor is sly, Steven M. Thomas shows as much promise as any author on the suspense scene.
Download or read book Couples written by John Updike and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—Time One of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the “post-Pill paradise.” It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this one’s existence is brief and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that inspires its creation is eternal. Praise for Couples “Couples [is] John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.”—The New York Times Book Review “Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Paradise written by Elmer Bendiner and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thousand years ago, Arabs & Jews built a paradise in the southern half of Spain. Everyone had the good life. This was a time of acceptance of differences.
Download or read book The Exotic Tastes of Paradise written by Felicia Wakwella Sørensen and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Taste of Conquest written by Michael Krondl and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The smell of sweet cinnamon on your morning oatmeal, the gentle heat of gingerbread, the sharp piquant bite from your everyday peppermill. The tales these spices could tell: of lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper groves of paradise. The Taste of Conquest offers up a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire, fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and mouthwatering cuisine–in short, the very stuff of which our world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned writer and food historian, tells the story of three legendary cities–Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam–and how their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the world’s peoples were irrevocably brought together as a result of the spice trade. Before the great voyages of discovery, Venice controlled the business in Eastern seasonings and thereby became medieval Europe’s most cosmopolitan urban center. Driven to dominate this trade, Portugal’s mariners pioneered sea routes to the New World and around the Cape of Good Hope to India to unseat Venice as Europe’s chief pepper dealer. Then, in the 1600s, the savvy businessmen of Amsterdam “invented” the modern corporation–the Dutch East India Company–and took over as spice merchants to the world. Sharing meals and stories with Indian pepper planters, Portuguese sailors, and Venetian foodies, Krondl takes every opportunity to explore the world of long ago and sample its many flavors. The spice trade and its cultural exchanges didn’t merely lend kick to the traditional Venetian cookies called peverini, or add flavor to Portuguese sausages of every description, or even make the Indonesian rice table more popular than Chinese takeout in trendy Amsterdam. No, the taste for spice of a few wealthy Europeans led to great crusades, astonishing feats of bravery, and even wholesale slaughter. As stimulating as it is pleasurable, and filled with surprising insights, The Taste of Conquest offers a fascinating perspective on how, in search of a tastier dish, the world has been transformed.
Download or read book The Taste of Place written by Amy B. Trubek and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-05-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why do we think about food, taste it, and cook it? While much has been written about the concept of terroir as it relates to wine, in this vibrant, personal book, Amy Trubek, a pioneering voice in the new culinary revolution, expands the concept of terroir beyond wine and into cuisine and culture more broadly. Bringing together lively stories of people farming, cooking, and eating, she focuses on a series of examples ranging from shagbark hickory nuts in Wisconsin and maple syrup in Vermont to wines from northern California. She explains how the complex concepts of terroir and goût de terroir are instrumental to France's food and wine culture and then explores the multifaceted connections between taste and place in both cuisine and agriculture in the United States. How can we reclaim the taste of place, and what can it mean for us in a country where, on average, any food has traveled at least fifteen hundred miles from farm to table? Written for anyone interested in food, this book shows how the taste of place matters now, and how it can mediate between our local desires and our global reality to define and challenge American food practices.
Download or read book Strangers in Paradise written by Terry Moore (comics.) and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest love story ever told is finally available in an affordable, softcover omnibus edition! This two-book package contains all 2,128 pages of Terry Moore's epic tale featuring Katchoo, Francine, David, and Casey as they face life's biggest challenges by facing them together. All 107 issues of the Strangers In Paradise series are here, including the spin-offs Molly & Poo, Princess Warrior, When World's Collide, and David's Story.
Download or read book Pure Paradise written by Allison Hobbs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deliciously decadent glimpse inside a day salon that also caters to the sexual fantasies of its affluent clientele. Behind closed doors, the Pure Paradise salon secretly offers a more salacious menu of services for its discerning clients. While the company is raking in the dough, its proprietor, Milan, cultivates her own personal Rolodex of willing men and women who crave to indulge her most voracious desires. It seems as if Milan has it all—but she wants more. For Milan, the ultimate catch would be the elusive Hilton Dorsey, an unreasonably handsome, former football player. But her relentless, irrational pursuit of the golden boy has caused Milan to neglect her financial benefactor, jeopardizing her budding empire. Will her obsession with Hilton Dorsey be her ultimate downfall? New York Times bestselling author Allison Hobbs returns with another heart-thumping erotic adventure with Pure Paradise, a thrilling novel that caters to the sensual tastes of a diverse audience that is sure to leave readers begging for more.
