Tastes of Paradise - by Wolfgang Schivelbusch (Paperback)
$15.19 sale price when purchased online
$17.00 list price
Target Online store #3991
About this item
Highlights
- It began with pepper and other spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg, some eight hundred years ago.
- About the Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch was born in Berlin in 1941 and is a German scholar, historian, and author.
- 256 Pages
- Social Science, Customs & Traditions
Description
About the Book
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.Book Synopsis
It began with pepper and other spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg, some eight hundred years ago. Then came coffee, tea, and chocolate, followed by alcohol and opium--all articles of pleasure people in the Western world craved in order to escape from their humdrum lives and heighten their daily enjoyment. How humanity transformed its history in the course of finding the rare condiments, stimulants, intoxicants, and narcotics that helped to make life more tolerable is the story of this rich and captivating book. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, in his engrossing journey through the centuries, documents with a wealth of startling information (and 125 illustrations) how our drive for the pleasure substances we can eat, drink, or inhale fueled the energies of the Old World with an explosive power that propelled mankind across the oceans and into a new age. The urge to please the palate and stimulate, benumb, or pleasure the senses arose at the dawn of the modern age to dovetail with the needs of the rising merchant class and the capitalism it spawned. How the hunger for spices mobilized the Occident's energies with an intensity matched only by today's greed for oil; how coffee became the drink of the bourgeois age as the beverage which, unlike alcohol, promotes clear thinking and hard work; how tobacco became coffee's ally in fine-tuning the fast-paced nervous sensibilities of the modern era--here is a rich human array, an anecdotal history of ideas and beliefs, of fashions, fads, and rituals that orders a treasury of unknown facts in a new way to give us a fresh perspective on our own past and on our present.About the Author
Wolfgang Schivelbusch was born in Berlin in 1941 and is a German scholar, historian, and author. In 2003 he was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He currently lives in New York.Dimensions (Overall): 8.05 Inches (H) x 5.16 Inches (W) x .52 Inches (D)
Weight: .52 Pounds
Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up
Number of Pages: 256
Genre: Social Science
Sub-Genre: Customs & Traditions
Publisher: Vintage
Format: Paperback
Author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Language: English
Street Date: June 29, 1993
TCIN: 1001647344
UPC: 9780679744382
Item Number (DPCI): 247-05-7233
Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
Shipping details
Estimated ship dimensions: 0.52 inches length x 5.16 inches width x 8.05 inches height
Estimated ship weight: 0.52 pounds
We regret that this item cannot be shipped to PO Boxes.
This item cannot be shipped to the following locations: American Samoa (see also separate entry under AS), Guam (see also separate entry under GU), Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico (see also separate entry under PR), United States Minor Outlying Islands, Virgin Islands, U.S., APO/FPO
Return details
This item can be returned to any Target store or Target.com.
This item must be returned within 90 days of the date it was purchased in store, shipped, delivered by a Shipt shopper, or made ready for pickup.
See the return policy for complete information.