The PC: Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors.

(Published at LouisvilleBeer.com on January 13, 2014)

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Tastes of paradise can shatter mirrors

I’m not in the habit of compulsively re-reading books, even those of the highly influential sort.

Of course, there are exceptions:

• The early beer writing of Michael Jackson
• “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History,” a sobering tome by John Barry
• Jim Bouton’s ribald baseball tell-all, “Ball Four”
• “A Confederacy of Dunces,” the classic New Orleans comic novel from John Kennedy Toole

Another is “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants,” by the wonderfully named Wolfgang Schivelbusch. He is not a Groucho Marx character from Duck Soup, but a German-born cultural historian operating from a decidedly (Karl) Marxist perspective.