Craving something sweet? Sugar, whether it’s glazed on your favorite donut or poured in a Starbucks latte is a modern-day staple in most households. What we don’t realize is that this was not always the case. So, where did sugar as we know it begin, and how is it even made? There was a time when sugar was what drove the economy of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Marc Aronson and Marine Budhos’s Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Slavery, Freedom, and Science, explores cane sugar and how it ultimately came to impact the slave trade and the move toward sugar being created in labs, not fields.
This non-fiction book is easy to comprehend and isn’t riddled with complicated vocabulary or complex content. Any history buff will be sure to enjoy this insight into how one small substance made such an impact on both the economy and people’s day-to-day lives. There are also multiple illustrations throughout the book to help you get a better understanding of how “all this death, all this cruelty, all this abuse was for one purpose: to produce ‘white gold.’”
If you enjoy this book, you will enjoy Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos’s other popular non-fiction titles: Eyes of the World : Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and the Invention of Modern Photojournalism.
-Ashleigh Edwards, Library Associate
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