Spice by Jack Turner

Spice by Jack Turner

In this brilliant, engrossing work, Jack Turner explores an era--from ancient times through the Renaissance--when what we now consider common condiments were valued in gold and blood.

Spices made sour medieval wines palatable, camouflaged the smell of corpses, and served as wedding night aphrodisiacs. Indispensible for cooking, medicine, worship, and the arts of love, they were thought to have magical properties and were so valuable that they were often kept under lock and key. For some, spices represented Paradise, for others, the road to perdition, but they were potent symbols of wealth and power, and the wish to possess them drove explorers to circumnavigate the globe--and even to savagery.

Following spices across continents and through literature and mythology, Spice is a beguiling narrative about the surprisingly vast influence spices have had on human desire.

Includes eight pages of color photographs.

One of the Best Books of the Year: Discover Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle 

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375707056
ISBN 10	0375707050
Title	Spice
Author	Jack Turner
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2005-08-09
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.