Bookcase Location: TOP SHELF – Essential

Arms & the Man; George Bernard Shaw (theatrical play, 1894; published book 1898); basis for the 1908 operetta Chocolate Soldier (later made into silent film in 1915 & Broadway play 1947)

With apologies to all Como Agua para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) fans, this play is a candidate for the single best work in which chocolate drives the central motive of the drama. The title from Virgil’s ‘of arms & the man I sing’, refers to a soldier at war who carries chocolate instead of a gun in his holster. Seeking refuge from the conflict, he marches into a rural farmhouse, encounters a rustic maiden, falls madly for her & she writes the note that seals the deal: ‘To my chocolate-cream soldier’.

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Bookcase Location: TOP SHELF – Essential

Dr. Maricel Presilla is largely responsible for putting premium chocolate on the map in the USA. Arguably our finest public educator, if there were only one book to have on the subject, this would probably be it. New Taste is to chocolate what Homer’s Odyssey is to literature or Beethoven’s 9th to music – practically impossible to get around, because it’s nearly all encompassing as the chocolate path often begins & ends right here. This Cucharamama & veritable madre de cacao has spoon fed many a novice until grown into full-fledged cognoscenti, most of whom still consider the book their bible. It’s that good. And with the updated revised addition, New Taste is now the new testament too.

Quality research – much of it firsthand – delivered at a high level of stylized prose & clear exposition applied with a light touch that occasionally ventures into poetics (e.g., in the rainforest the “vengeful sunlight… slivering into a thousand rays in the dusky understory – a hothouse without glass – … somehow atavistic, Jurassic… source of every chocolate bar & truffle ever made… the closest thing we mortals can get to ambrosia”) packaged in a continuously visual lay-out popping with eye-candy. Read More »

Bookcase Location: TOP SHELF – Essential

Both an academic & popular title, True History is an authoritative social account of cacáo & a compendium of the tree’s rich lore & voyage from the Americas to global phenomenon. Literally & physically a labor of love as Sophie Coe died in the very act of writing this history that was completed by her equally erudite husband, a fellow anthropology professor at Yale, who was pivotal in recognizing the PSS (Primary Standard Sequence) that in conjunction with several other key links ultimately allowed Dr. David Stuart at Harvard to decipher Mayan glyphs that adorn their pottery vessels.

If some passages read a little anemic, hungering to bite into more meatier material, this can be attributed to: a) the enormous scope of covering 3,000 plus years in a readable format of just over 250 pages; b) scant pre-Columbian archeological evidence (though this is gradually changing), leaving much of the currently accessible ancient record to be gleaned largely thru linguistics; & c) a sizable portion of the European history of chocolate amounts to a Page 6 gossip rag dishing the activities of profligates & degenerates among its aristocracy. Read More »