A treat for literate, adventure-loving foodies, best accompanied by a bespoke chocolate bar.
A spirited quest for the perfect cacao bean.
Food journalist Jacobsen opens his comprehensive account in Oaxaca, Mexico, not far from a source of cacao and its resulting chocolate, so prized by the Aztecs that they expanded their empire far from its heartland to gain control of the Pacific coastal region where it grew. All cacao is, he writes, “ridiculously rich,” with a fat content of at least 55 percent, but some of the world’s most prized cacao, found in remote tropical forests from Mexico south to its homeland in the Bolivian jungle east of the Andes, is far richer still. These hard-to-find “wild cacao” plants fuel the gourmet chocolatiers of the world, such as the Swiss producer Felchlin, supplied by a German agronomist in Bolivia who built and lost a fortune in the chocolate trade but, for all his travails, can’t stop searching for the cacao grail. Jacobsen goes far afield himself, meeting some wonderfully weird characters and tracing their finds to chocolate makers in the U.S. and Europe. A skilled food historian with a sharp eye for the economics of the delicious, he also peppers his prose with interesting tidbits, including the boom-and-bust ways of lumpen chocolatiers like Hershey, which once commandeered the entire cacao output of Belize but then, when market conditions changed, left growers holding the proverbial bag. Of particular interest to budding entrepreneurs is the fact that several of Jacobsen’s subjects are young women who have carved a place for themselves as brokers for the organically grown, sustainable cacao whose growers are paid a premium. There’s plenty of adventure left in the game, Jacobsen writes: “In all likelihood, the Amazon and other remote corners of Latin America harbor other unique families of cacao waiting for their big moment. The search continues.”
A treat for literate, adventure-loving foodies, best accompanied by a bespoke chocolate bar.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781639733576
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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