Synopses & 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 Europeand#8217;s Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar was the substance that drove the bloody slave trade and caused the loss of countless lives but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. With songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Time line, source notes, bibliography, index.
Review
"This is fine historical writing: an epic story on a broad canvas that never loses sight of individual moments of human drama; a historical methodology infused with political, intellectual, cultural, and social strands; a complex sequence of cause and effect; an illuminating synthesis of primary and secondary sources; and a thoughtful marriage of words, picture, and design."and#8212;
Horn Book, starred reviewand#160;
"Covering 10,000 years of history and ranging the world, the story is made personal by the authors' own family stories, their passion for the subject and their conviction that young people are up to the challenge of complex, well-written narrative history."and#8212;Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewand#160;
"As the title suggests, this stirring, highly detailed history of the sugar trade reaches across time and around the globe . . . The book's scope is ambitious, but the clear, informal prose, along with maps and archival illustrations, makes the horrific connections with dramatic immediacy."and#8212;Booklist
"This is a poignant, ultimately hopeful essay that clearly chronicles the human pursuit of sugar to satisfy our collective sweet tooth."and#8212;The Bulletin
"An impassioned, thought-provoking account that forces us to look anew at the things we take for granted."and#8212;Jennifer Brown, Shelf Awareness
"This book, at once serious and engaging, traces the complex history of sugar over vast expanses of time and space, exploring ways in which this one commodity influenced the formation of empires, the enslavement and migrations of peoples, the development of ideas about liberty, and so much more."and#8212;Deborah Warner, Curator, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Review
"Superb...a strong choice for history classrooms and a must for all libraries." KIRKUS, starred Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"fascinating, insightful...startling global connections...This outstanding work is highly compelling reading and belongs in every library." SLJ, starred School Library Journal, Starred
"Aronson offers a timely and relevant interpretation of this chapter of history, its contradictions, and its compromises." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Publishers Weekly
"For serious students curious about who and what we are as a nation." BOOKLIST Booklist, ALA
"Unquestionably significant...Readers gain a better understanding of [events]...that spurred the colonies toward independence." BCCB Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"Engaging history...lively prose...[Readers] will come away with a better idea...of events in our history." HORN BOOK Horn Book
"An account that will strike not only children but most adults as in many ways original." NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW The New York Times Book Review
"Refreshing...provides provocative fodder for classroom discussion...History was never so much fun." -VOYA VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)
"This engaging history...[concludes] Aronson's dramatic and thought-provoking trilogy" HORN BOOK GUIDE, Pointer Horn Book Guide, Pointer
Review
"With plenty of gory details . . .and#160; Even reluctant readers will respond to the gruesome descriptions of the disease and of brave volunteers . . . Quotations from the doctorsand#8217; letters and later accounts by other participants gives the story an immediacy heightened by conversational writing full of questions and cliffhangers . . .and#160; powerful exploration of a disease that killed 100,000 U.S. citizens in the 1800s."--Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The book is beutifully researched and written with wit and passion. Sweeping, multilayered nonfiction." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review
"This is an intelligent, demanding work...The text is...rich with drama, imagination, and occasional wry humor." Horn Book, Starred
"This book is exemplary nonfiction and pure gold for libraries." School Library Journal, Starred
"This title is at once lively, accessible, and challenging." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"provacative and tantalizing, revealing his subject as a person of canny wit and magnetism with all-too-human shortcomings" Publishers Weekly, Starred
"Reader's will be as riveted by [Aronson's] strong, dramatic writing as they are enlightened by his wide-ranging analyses." Kirkus Reviews
"For some it will be a reference source. For history lovers, it will be recreational reading." Children's Book Review Service
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
This globe-spanning history of sugar is an epic story on a broad canvas that never loses sight of individual moments of human drama; a historical methodology infused with political, intellectual, cultural, and social strands; a complex sequence of cause and effect; an illuminating synthesis of primary and secondary sources; and a thoughtful marriage of words, picture, and design. (Horn Book starred review)
Here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways. Using songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos put a human face on this vast pageant. Time line, source notes, bibliography, and index included.
The history of sugar runs like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe's Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar caused the loss of countless lives, but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France.
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 slave trade. Sugar moved, murdered, and freed millions; sugar changed the world.
Synopsis
This extensively researched and groundbreaking account by Sibert medalist Marc Aronson centers on events in the mid-18th century that enabled Americans to give up their loyalty to England and form their own nation. Shedding new light on familiar aspects of American history, such as the Boston Tea Party, and ending with the aftermath of the American Revolution, Aronson approaches the events that shaped our country from a fresh angle and connects them to issues that still exist in modern times. Also developed throughout is the pioneering idea that the struggle for American independence was actually part of a larger conflict that spanned the globe, reaching across Europe to India.
Packed with dramatic events, battles, and memorable figures such as George Washington and Tom Paine in America and Robert Clive in India, this insightful narrative provides a multi-layered portrait of how our nation came to be, while discovering anew the themes, images, and fascinating personalities that run through our entire history. Cast of characters, maps, endnotes and bibliography, Internet resources, timeline, index.
Synopsis
A riveting medical detective drama about anand#160;truly extraordinary discovery, illustrated with archival images, written by an award-winning author of nonfiction.
Synopsis
Red oozes from the patient's gums. He has a rushing headache and the whites of his eyes look like lemons. He will likely die within days.
Here is the true story of how four Americans and one Cuban tracked down a killer, one of the world's most vicious plagues: yellow fever. Set in fever-stricken Cuba, this book allows the reader to feel the heavy air, smell the stench of disease, hears the whine of mosquitoes biting human volunteers during the surreal experiments. Exploring themes of courage, cooperation, and the ethics of human experimentation, this gripping account is ultimately a story of the triumph of science.
Synopsis
In this extraordinarily well researched and insightful biography, Marc Aronson explores the amazing accomplishments and dismal failures of one of the most flamboyant figures of the Elizabethan age. Best remembered for laying his coat in a muddy puddle so that Queen Elizabeth I could walk across it, Sir Walter Ralegh committed himself to pleasing his monarch and obtaining power in her court. He heroically risked his life in battle time and again, chasing after glory to win her favor. His notoriously ill-fated quest for the mythological golden city of El Dorado was perhaps his grandest attempt, but it also was his undoing, and Ralegh ultimately paid for his mistakes with his life. Despite his shortcomings, he was not only charismatic and brave, he was brilliant as well, and his contributions to the New World and to western culture as a whole were vast and enduring. MAPS, ENDNOTES and BIBLIOGRAPHY, TIMELINE, INDEX.
Synopsis
In the army, the advance guard is the first wave of soldiers who rush into enemy territory, risking their lives to map out the terrain. In the arts, the avant-garde consists of people who have devoted their talents, even their lives, to seeing the future and to confronting others with their visions. This intriguing introduction to modern art examines the avant-garde from its nineteenth-century origins in Paris to its meaning and influence today. It presents the visionaries who took the greatest risks, who saw the furthest, and who made the most challenging art-art that changed how we imagine our world. From cubism to pop art and beyond, this is the story not only of those risk takers, but of their creations and of the times in which they lived. Notes, bibliography, index.
About the Author
Marc Aronson has won many awards and prizes for his books, including the first Sibert Award and the Boston Globeand#150;Horn Book Award for Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for Eldorado. Marina Budhos is an assistant professor of English at William Paterson University. She is the author of Ask Me No Questions, winner of the inaugural James Cook Teen Book Award. She and her husband live with their two sons in Maplewood, New Jersey.