A Perfect Red

A Perfect Red was written by Amy Butler Greenfield. It was about the role of red dye in the history of the world. It started by describing the symbolic meaning of the color red in many ancient cultures, and went on to explain how the rarity of good red dye led to many Renaissance elites using red dyed clothes a statement of wealth. When the Spanish conquistadors found cochineal (the brightest red dye anyone had ever seen) in the New World, Europe embraced it. For hundreds of years, cochineal was in high demand and low supply, Then finally other countries managed to smuggle it out of Spain and grow it for themselves, and the market collapsed.
I thought that this book was boring. Some parts were interesting, such as the chapter on pirates, but there was too much detail on things that were not relevant to the plot. I admire the amount of research and time that Greenfield put into this, (the bibliography is 25 pages long) but I would not recommend this book to others.

~Mary Magdaline

The True History of Chocolate

The True History of Chocolate covered over thousands of years of history with the simple connection of chocolate. Although it was many years, the book was not very long and for the most part was very interesting. Learning that chocolate was originally served only in liquid form, hot or cold was a lot different from now where most of us think of Hershey's chocolate bars when one says chocolate. Starting with the Olmecs and Mayans was also different, then moving on to the Aztecs and eventually Europe.

This book covered not only chocolate, but the slave trade, the fall of the different mesoamerican empires and the conqistadors that conquered the Aztecs. Moving on from there was the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Reason. It was fun to see how chocolate adapted and survived through all the different years and now is thriving. Also, I learned the different chemicals in chocolate and why it used to be used for medicinal purposes and different ways to grow it, under certain and very specific climates. Overall this book covered years of history and taught me lots of new facts about chocolate and I probably never would have known.

Evita