Аннотация
Award-winning author and broadcaster Carol Off reveals the fascinating and often horrifying stories behind our desire for all things chocolate.Whether its part of a Halloween haul, the contents of a heart-shaped box or just a candy bar stashed in a desk drawer, chocolate is synonymous with pleasures both simple and indulgent. But behind the sweet image is a long history of exploitation. In the eighteenth century the European aristocracy went wild for the Aztec delicacy. In later years, colonial territories were ravaged and slaves imported in droves as native populations died out under the strain of feeding the worlds appetite for chocolate.Carol Off traces the origins of the cocoa craze and follows chocolates evolution under such overseers as Hershey, Cadbury and Mars. In Cte dIvoire, the West African nation that produces nearly half of the worlds cocoa beans, she follows a dark and dangerous seam of greed. Against a backdrop of civil war and corruption, desperately poor farmers engage in appalling practices such as the indentured servitude of young boys children who dont even know what chocolate tastes like.Off shows that, with the complicity of Western governments and corporations, unethical practices continue to thrive. Bitter Chocolate is a social history, a passionate investigative account and an eye-opening expos of the workings of a multi-billion dollar industry that has institutionalized misery as it served our pleasures.From the Hardcover edition.
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