The Devil's Picnic
Travels Through the Underworld of Food and Drink
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Devil’s Picnic is a feast like no other: start with an aperitif of powerful Norwegian moonshine; nibble on a French raw-milk cheese that can carry a brain-swelling bacteria; sip Bolivian coca tea and Swiss absinthe; maybe puff a Cuban cigar in a California bar. Award-winning journalist Taras Grescoe travels the world sampling these and other substances that have been legally banned and publicly demonized. As he partakes of forbidden pleasures and risks run-ins with the law, his experiences make for fascinating reading and for equally compelling meditations on personal freedom. Who decides what’s bad for us? What role do international politics play in the banning of certain substances? What will be banned next?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This detailed chef's tour of prohibited pleasures for the palate, from Norwegian moonshine and Bolivian coca leaves to Spanish bull testicles, is laced with magnificent descriptions some mouthwatering, others quite repulsive. Grescoe (Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec) uses food as a pretext to lead readers on a heady quest to corroborate the libertarian principle of free will. Through his well-researched history lessons, readers learn of the birth and evolution of nine different foodstuffs, and the politics behind their prohibition. Grescoe paints colorful portraits of contemporary cultures by walking the land, sampling the fare and providing firsthand interviews with various food experts: aficionados, suppliers and officials charged with enforcing interdiction. His narrative makes a convincing case that most restrictions are based on unwarranted or outdated health concerns, or political agendas that profit the government (up to 86% of the price of liquor in Norway can go to taxes!). And while he successfully illustrates the arguments used by supporters of legalization, he surprises himself by conceding that certain governmental intervention can indeed be a necessary evil (e.g., protection of endangered animals). With amusing anecdotes and exotic imagery, this walk through the garden of "forbidden fruit" is a savory and powerful scrutiny into the psychology, markets and politics of prohibition.
