Guaraná
How Brazil Embraced the World's Most Caffeine-Rich Plant
By Seth Garfield
336 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 17 halftones, 2 maps, 1 table
-
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7127-7
Published: December 2022 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7126-0
Published: December 2022 -
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-7128-4
Published: November 2022
Buy this Book
- Paperback $34.95
- Hardcover $99.00
- E-Book $22.99
For Professors:
Free E-Exam Copies
Awards & distinctions
World Winner and Brazil Winner, 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Drinks History
World Winner and Brazil Winner, 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Drinks History Non Alcoholic
Brazil Winner, 2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Indigenous Peoples Food
Honorable Mention, 2023 Sergio Buarque de Holanda Prize for Best Book in Social Sciences, Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association
Guaraná’s journey elucidates human impacts on Amazonian ecosystems; the circulation of knowledge, goods, and power; and the promise of modernity in Latin America's largest nation. For Garfield, the beverage's history reveals not only the structuring of inequalities in Brazil but also the mythmaking and ordering of social practices that constitute so-called traditional and modern societies.
About the Author
Seth Garfield is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is In Search of the Amazon.
For more information about Seth Garfield, visit
the
Author
Page.
Reviews
"A luminous social biography of a single Amazonian fruit. Historian Seth Garfield reinvigorates the abiding relevance of the history of commodities as an entry point into Latin American history. . . . Elegantly written and immensely interdisciplinary."—Not Even Past
"Beginning with an origin myth—the eyes of a child recast as the guaraná fruit—Garfield gives us a rich and engaging history of this Brazilian plant's use over time as an Indigenous product, a colonial stimulant, an Amazonian commodity engaging nationalistic dynamics, and a drink that has now come to rival Coca-Cola as a kind of national beverage. A terrific book."—Susanna Hecht, University of California, Los Angeles
"A tour de force. Garfield's eye-opening history brings together the many ramifications and implications of a culturally and commercially significant plant. From the appropriation of Indigenous knowledge to conflicting visions of the Amazon's past and future, Garfield centers the quintessential Brazilian 'taste' in his exploration of the role of authenticity in the global economy."—Barbara Weinstein, New York University