Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science

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Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 319 ratings · 110 reviews

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 th...more

Hardcover, 166 pages

Published November 15th 2010 by Clarion Books

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Jan 19, 2011 Jan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: teenbooks, non-fiction

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 t...more 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. (less)

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May 05, 2013 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nbgs2011, death, families, social-justice

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...more

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Jan 16, 2013 marin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: market-research, teen-nonfic

market research

4 1/2 stars. Limited booktalking appeal. Sugar was the gold of its day, driving economies, creating nations, making the rich richer, and enslaving minorities the world over. Fascinating bits of historical trivia sprinkled throughout more well known facts. Tenuous connection between the married authors' sugar past is over-emphasized, though makes for an interesting preface. Impeccably written and researched with historical illustrations almost on every page. Occasional lapses into...more

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May 12, 2012 Rebecca Binks rated it 5 of 5 stars

This well-crafted book about the history of sugar uses a blended-narrative from of non-fiction to tell its tale. Considering that today we only look at sugar within the framework of our war on waistlines, this book provides a detailed and compelling look at the rich story of sugar and how it has shaped world history as well as the histories of the authors’ families. From religious ceremonies in India through the slave-trade in America, sugar has played a central role. Gandhi’s concept of Satyagr...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Hilary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: grades-5-6, grades-7-8, non-fiction

Husband and wife team examine sugar and the impact it had on the slave trade to the Caribbean and the impact it had on other regions in the world after they both realize that their families have a background in sugar production.
An interesting read, although more about slavery than on the title product. Although the book focuses mostly on slavery, other impacts that sugar had on the world are examined - how sugar was used during the Industrial Revolution, for example, to give factory workers a mu...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Adam Rex rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 nauseati...more 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.
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Mar 13, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

An incredibly in depth look at the history of sugar and slavery. Well illustrated with photographs and drawings, there's a lot to be fascinated - and horrified by - in this book. Aronson and Budhos do a good job of breaking down the history of sugar consumption, from New Guinea in 9000 BC to 19th century Louisiana.

While I was certainly fascinated, I found this to be such a dense book that I knew I couldn't give it a five star rating for my own personal enjoyment. But I had to knock it down anoth...more An incredibly in depth look at the history of sugar and slavery. Well illustrated with photographs and drawings, there's a lot to be fascinated - and horrified by - in this book. Aronson and Budhos do a good job of breaking down the history of sugar consumption, from New Guinea in 9000 BC to 19th century Louisiana.

While I was certainly fascinated, I found this to be such a dense book that I knew I couldn't give it a five star rating for my own personal enjoyment. But I had to knock it down another star because of two brief passages that stuck out as...awkward, to put a positive spin on it.

Pg. 39: "You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed." I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf.

Similarly, on pg. 70: "Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today." This one strikes me as worse than page 39. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom.

In both of these instances, I can kind of see what Aronson and Budhos were getting at, but the way they chose to phrase it was just so off that I couldn't let it go without comment.(less)

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Dec 12, 2010 Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a terrific book created for educators who are teaching social studies to students. The book covers the impact of sugar cane and the love of sugar on the world. There are many facts that I didn't know or if I knew the "major" facts, I still didn't know how the facts added up to a whole. While sugar may have been discovered by the West during Alexander The Great's time, it didn't seem to make an impact until the great ships were invented and more products were brought to the West through t...more

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Aug 10, 2010 Edward Sullivan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: young-adult-nonfiction

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, ins...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Karen Ball rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-challenge, cybils-mg-ya-nonfic-2011

Now that is one ambitious title! Both authors have family connections to the sugar industry, and those led them to research the history of sugar. Turns out those little white grains that sweeten my coffee come from a particularly brutal history. The beginnings of sugar cane cultivation came from New Guinea, and the Greeks helped spread it through the ancient world. When Christopher Columbus brought cane plants to Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), plantations sprang up, the indus...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Mark Flowers rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more 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. (less)

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Aug 28, 2010 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: j-nonfiction, ya

The fact that their two families, from different hemispheres had lives affected by sugar, leads Aronson and Budhos to investigate the role sugar has played in changing history world-wide, from the early discoveries of refining methods through the slave trade and the ideals of human freedom and equality that have spread around the world.
This is an intriguing way to look at world history, another reminder that there have been interconnections throughout human history. The writing carries you alon...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Becky B rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Only teachers

Shelves: juvenile-non-fiction

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...more 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. (view spoiler)
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Nov 16, 2010 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

SUGAR CHANGED THE WORLD by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos is a fascinating and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that looks at the history of sugar, or rather, the history of the world as it was shaped by sugar. This work of narrative nonfiction starts out with two personal stories about the authors' ancestors and the way sugar shaped their families' journeys, but then the camera pulls back to reveal the truly remarkable impact the sweet stuff has had on the world, the spread of slavery, a...more

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Dec 18, 2010 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this one after seeing as a recommend on the NJASL Listserve. It is intended to start conversation on the Sugar Trade and Slavery and it should do the job. Whether you are a middle school to high school teacher/student or an adult seeking knowledge this is one of those books that you keep coming back to like a well for learning.

Use it and let the text help you and your students understand a very complex issue. Text is easy to understand and filled with information for further research and...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: History Teachers

Shelves: historical, multicultural, non-fiction, t2-2010, teen, tween, illustrated

I enjoyed the story of sugar, but I decided I really liked this when I read the afterward. The story is fascinating, and does a great job of interlinking a million different concepts. The subtitle is accurate, but doesn't do the text justice; the subtitle makes the book sound kind of random and wandering, and I found the story to be pretty focused and driven.

As a history major, I really appreciated the effort taken to make the text reflect the intriguing, horrific, amazing, and personal aspects...more

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Apr 11, 2012 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: j-non-fiction

_Sugar Changed the World_ is a history for 21st century learners. The volume enhances the historical narrative with photographs, drawings, and other primary sources, including music, while the authors ultimately credit sugar with bringing the slave versus free argument to a head, among other global developments.

It has been known that slaves possessed the knowledge that kept their masters' crops profitable, and this idea is beginning to be explored in historical works written for adult audiences....more _Sugar Changed the World_ is a history for 21st century learners. The volume enhances the historical narrative with photographs, drawings, and other primary sources, including music, while the authors ultimately credit sugar with bringing the slave versus free argument to a head, among other global developments.

It has been known that slaves possessed the knowledge that kept their masters' crops profitable, and this idea is beginning to be explored in historical works written for adult audiences. (Carney, 2001) The authors of _Sugar_ are to be commended for exploring this concept in a history written for young adult audiences, thus teaching young readers that slaves deserve not only our sympathy, but also our respect.

The credit given to sugar as a catalyst of major world events, particularly revolutions, is a bit of a stretch and the authors clearly struggle in places to keep their thesis together ("The Lawyer, 118, and "Satyagraha," 121). Furthermore, the work is peppered with such outlandish statements as, "the true Age of Sugar had begun--and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire, or war had ever done," (35) or the even more questionable, "the abolitionists...created the most effective public relations campaign in history." (78) While such leaps are bothersome to a reader who desires historical accuracy and valid documentation, the grandiose statements do not necessarily detract from the legitimacy of the work as a whole.

In the same way, while sugar may not deserve quite as much limelight as the authors would have us believe, it is nonetheless useful to examine such significant historical events as Emancipation and India's independence through the viewpoint of one particular theme in order to gain a fresh perspective.

Though the concluding flourish, "we live in the world sugar created" (126) may be a bit presumptuous, if sugar didn't create the world, it most certainly influenced it. On that point the authors leave little room for doubt.(less)

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Feb 09, 2012 Karen Yingling rated it 4 of 5 stars

Who knew that sugar had such a storied history? Both authors discovered that their families had ties to different areas of sugar production and set out to discover more about this history, resulting in a book that takes us from honey used by the ancient Greeks, to sugar cane in Indian and its dissemination to other parts of the world, to Europe and the development of beet sugar. This well-formatted book has good maps and illustrations, and its length (126 pages without the notes) is a good one f...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Molly added it

Shelves: informational-text, multicultural, relevant-to-my-high-school-students, wide-reading-project

This book parallels some books I already use that are at a higher reading level, I will keep this one in mind for differentiation. This book is comprehensive and of interest to most. The text is rich and filled with many examples and primary sources. He makes connections from people’s earliest cravings for sweetness to the slave trade to Gandhi’s work with persecuted Indians in the British Empire, as well as some connections to modern migrant working conditions that almost mirror indentured serv...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Shawn Thrasher rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not usually a fan of nonfiction written for youth, most of which is considerably dumbed-down to the point of inanity, too heavy on the visuals without much put into the writing, and (as a colleague described it once) "report fodder." Sugar Changed the World wasn't any of those things. It told a clear, interesting story about where sugar came from and how it conversely fostered a slave cultured and created of a culture of liberty, particularly in the United States but also for Haiti (both sta...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: children, nonfiction

This book deserves all the excellent reviews it got. It succinctly explains a complex topic in words understandable by middle schoolers, and is full of illustrations to give context and add further humanity to the story. There's plenty in it that I never knew, such as that of the African slaves brought to the new world, only 4% went to the United States; the rest went to sugar plantations across the Carribbean and the north coast of South America. I also was not aware of the vast numbers of Indi...more

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Apr 14, 2012 Maria Kramer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: best_of_the_best_reading_challenge, nonfiction-award, african, african-american, historical, informational, nonfiction, youth

This ambitious book covers the history of sugar and how it influenced and was influenced by human demographics, slavery, societal organization and revolution.

While interesting, I thought this book was perhaps trying too hard to tie everything together in a nice sugary bow. Also, trying to cover the globe-spanning history of sugar from 500 BC to the present may be too ambitious a task for a hundred-page book aimed at middle school students. As a result of cramming so much into such a small space,...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Jeannie rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting book about slavery and how sugar contributed to that "peculiar institution". I was interested to learn that only 4% of enslaved Africans came to North America; that is still not something to be proud of, but I’m glad to have gotten a better understanding of that whole part of history. On the other hand, my agronomist self couldn't help but be a bit disappointed to not get more of the science part. For example, sugar beets were only referred to as sugar beets in a black and white p...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, social-issues, history, teen

I was expecting a micro-history of sugar when I first began reading, which isn't exactly what I got. The title is accurate when it says "sugar changed the world;" how sugar changed the world is the subject of the book. Aronson and Budhos recount in the introduction how their ancestral connections to sugar (Aronson' has a connection to the European beet sugar industry, and Budhos' great-grandparents made a living on a sugar plantation in Guyana) spurred them to research and write the book.

The bul...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Donzel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2013, human-trafficking

This book would make an excellent resource for a homeschooling family. Well written, lots of pictures, good research, fun to read and full of facts about how world economics drive a specific industry.

From the dust jacket:
"Cane - not cotton or tobacco - drove the bloody Atlantic slave trade and took the lives of countless Africans who toiled on vast sugar plantations under cruel overseers. And yet the very popularity of sugar gave abolitionists in England the one tool that could finally end the s...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Laura (booksnob) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, non-fiction, young-adult

Singing....Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey, you are my candy and you got me wanting you. Who doesn't love sugar? Sugar Cane changed the world. Before Sugar can we had Honey as a sweetener and it was hard and dangerous to find. Sugar changed the way the world's food tasted, drove the Atlantic slave trade and it created a need for sweetness that lasts until this day.

Sugar Cane can be traced to the island of New Guinea to about 8000 B.C. It then made its way, through cultural diffusion, to Asia, where...more

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May 21, 2012 Kermit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: young-adult-nonfiction

4.1 stars

I got this title from a list of the best nonfiction for youth in 2011. I had recently watched a PBS television series called Black in Latin America. The PBS series made me aware of how prevalent the African slave trade had been in Central and South America. I was kind of aware of this--but really mostly associated slavery with the United States. This book clearly spells out how the sugar trade was the fuel for the slave trade. 4% of slaves stolen from Africa were brought to North Americ...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Melissa Mcavoy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: children-s-books, non-fiction, young-adult

Despite my less than perfect rating I believe this book to be outstanding for middle-grade readers through adult. It is a fascinating and complex history that will inform the reader's understanding of multiple areas of history, including slavery, the age of empire, the industrial revolution, the age of liberty/revolution, and on and on. This book revolutionized and linked my understanding of the history of India, the Caribbean, Hawaii and Louisiana. It resurrected Toussaint L'Ouverture from the...more Despite my less than perfect rating I believe this book to be outstanding for middle-grade readers through adult. It is a fascinating and complex history that will inform the reader's understanding of multiple areas of history, including slavery, the age of empire, the industrial revolution, the age of liberty/revolution, and on and on. This book revolutionized and linked my understanding of the history of India, the Caribbean, Hawaii and Louisiana. It resurrected Toussaint L'Ouverture from the graveyard of my memory. (In fact after writing that sentence I went back and changed my rating to 5 stars.)

I believe my objections to aspects of the editorial tone don't markedly detract from the overwhelming value of the book, which is fabulous and should be read by just about everybody. They do keep it from being sublime. I object to the overuse of unsubstantiated categorical statements and deterministic causation. It's not that I don't see the authors' remarks as valid. I think categoricals weaken the text and undermine their argument. Only a few things are 'always' or are 100% causal. Below are a few examples, in order of occurrence, and my objections.
"But rich people will always find ways to show off their wealth." p. 64. Really, always? That bothers me. I would have no problem with often, or even 'will', without the always. It's not ok to put any group of people into deterministic category from which they cannot escape. It's also almost never accurate.

"Why were the English the first to build factories to mill cloth? Because of the wealth they gained, the trade connections they made, and the banking system they developed in the slave and sugar trade. Indeed, the cheap cloth from the factories was used to clothe the slaves. English factories, you might say, were built, run, and paid for by sugar." p 68. This is a fascinating and rich idea. The above paragraph and lack of footnotes don't do the concept justice. The authors over reach and don't substantiate their position, which is a pity. Really, all the factories, all and only because of sugar? I buy that the accumulation of capital and the Great Britain's trade experience helped center the industrial revolution in England. I think Edmund Cartwright's patented a power loom and the steam engine had something to do with it too. Yes, I buy that cheap cloth was used to cloth the slaves, but that really wasn't why mechanical looms were invented, or what made them profitable. Adding that connection makes the concept feel forced.

"Africans were the true global citizens-" p. 70 Again, this is a great point, well worth making. It is part of a remarkable paragraph. I would have loved it if the authors omitted 'the' or added, "may have been the truest..." The don't define what a global citizen is and don't even let us know who the other contestants were for 'most global'. Do we really need to compete on most global? Absolutely, right the wrong of the implication that slaves were passive victims, not credited with the remarkable adjustments they made and the influence they had, but the didactic tone and lack of discussion force the reader to agree or resist.

"Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom" p. 73 Again, great packed idea presented too economically and deterministically for me. It was a tie, no doubt. I'm betting it could be proved it was the major tie. To do so I would want to know numbers enslaved for sugar versus other slave crops. I would want a connection established between the fatal brutality of sugar slavery versus other crop slavery and the resultant anti-slavery repugnance it aroused. (I do think they make this point well elsewhere.) Did seeing the extreme servitude and the utter lack of rights of slaves sensitize populations to their own lack of autonomy and make them determined to secure autonomy?

"Haitians won because of the fire of their cause" p. 87 I hate this one for its glib fantasy. I deeply dislike telling children, in any way shape or form, that if you believe hard enough you will triumph. Sometimes you will be mowed down like corn. Yes deeply held fiery conviction helps in a fight, as does knowing you will be killed if you lose, but not enough to let you win without strategy and leadership, not to mention supplies and abcence of disease. The authors undercut their substantive explanation of the Haitian's remarkable achievement with this bromide. Does that mean every failed revolt or revolution lost because they didn't have enough fire for their cause?

"Great ideas cover up brutal behavior" p87 This is a great, sophisticated concept that I'm thrilled the authors introduced. I wish they had given it a touch more nuance or fleshed out their assertion, rather than turn it into a didactic aphorism. Do great ideas do that all the time? Why not say they 'can be used to' or 'may' or 'sometimes', or even 'often' cover up brutal behavior.

Despite my cavils, I believe this to be a great book that warrants both purchase and multiple re-readings.

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Jan 23, 2011 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 tha...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Jolynn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: craft-focus, non-fiction, young-adult

Other reviews have mentioned that this is ambitious. It certainly is. Sweeping across civilizations and ages, the authors have constructed a compelling history of sugar. Love the mash up of history writing, personal narrative, and literary non-fiction. It could be woven together a bit more seamlessly, but I appreciate the scope and the inquiry that led the crafting of the story. The best part of the book for me was the included essay for teachers about their method. Really argues well for inquir...more

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About Marc Aronson

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...

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Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials

Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies

If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge

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title link	preview: Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/434472.Sugar_Changed_the_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348268973l/434472.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/434472.Sugar_Changed_the_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson[/url]

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