Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1580409 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 250 pages

From Amazon.com
After rice, corn, and wheat--the three staples of, respectively, East Asia, the Americas, and Eurasia--the olive is the foodstuff most closely bound to history, shaping the course of nations and empires. Mort Rosenblum, the author of the lively Secret Life of the Seine and many other books, gives us a wide-angle, altogether engrossing account of the olive's life and natural history, studding his narrative with conversations with farmers all around the Mediterranean. Rosenblum predicts an upsurge in olive cultivation in the United States as more and more people become aware of the fruit's many healthful qualities. If you have the urge to take up farming, read this fine book--you may be moved to put in some olive trees and try your luck.

From Publishers Weekly
"Olives," writes Rosenblum (The Secret Life of the Seine), "have oiled the wheels of civilization since Jericho built walls and ancient Greece was morning news." In this delightful and comprehensive account, he tells us about his travels throughout the Mediterranean countries, where the fruit is grown, in search of the olive's history and horticulture. What sparked his interest were some ancient half-dead olive trees on his property in Provence that he wanted to restore to health. The more he learned, the more fascinated he became and now, a connoisseur, he can discriminate between the nuances of different fruits and their oils, some of which are so delicious that they are drunk like liqueurs. Rosenblum's account is rich in details of the characters of growers he met in communities throughout the Mediterranean, where much of their joys and sorrows center around the crops. He learned about the care and nurture of the trees, discovered that the most desirable oils of Crete are now purchased in bulk by foreign companies who mix it with others, making the pure product difficult to find anywhere but in the communities where the trees are cultivated; and he explores the national and international politics that affect the trade. A paean to the olive tree, this is an enchanting excursion.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
To many Americans, as Rosenblum notes, an olive "is no more than a humble lump at the bottom of a martini," but to the portion of the world surrounding the Mediterranean, it symbolizes everything that is "happy and holy." When Rosenblum bought a farm in Provence and became the owner of 150 ramshackle olive trees, he soon came under the noble fruit's spell and set out to learn more about its history. This book is the result of that search, and like John McPhee on just about anything, it proves that there are stories everywhere if you just look hard enough. Rosenblum follows the olive from France through Spain, Italy, Israel, Greece, and the U.S., talking to growers, musing on the properties of good oil, sharing recipes and frustrations, and concluding, with friend and fellow writer Willis Barnstone, that the "olive is to the Mediterranean what the camel is to the desert. Every tree is an individual, anarchic, a struggling survivor." A remarkably fascinating tale of olives and civilization. Bill Ott

Customer Reviews

Passion on Paper
I'm gorging myself with olives: the fruit, the oil, this book. There are books you re-read years gone, but I found myself devouring clumps of this book just days after reading it in the conventional way. Mort Rosenblum could have given us an encyclopedic guide to the "noble fruit," but instead he follows his passions--and does first class journalistic digging--to press out the finest extra virgin essence of his subject. I also like the way Rosenblum writes, as much a friend as an authority. France, and its olive oils, comes first on the author's list, but he also does justice to subjects as disparate as the place of olives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the promising growth of the high-end California olive oil industry, and even the seemingly bottomless corruption on the olive oil front in the European Community. Few effective journalists write with such literary flair, without seeming to try too hard. A winner.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

GREAT READ!
This is a great book! I bought a copy while visiting an olive orchard in Australia. Anyone interested in developing an olive orchard would find this book useful. Excellent travel writing to boot! I've even planted my own kalamata olive tree after reading the book . I'm so inspired I might even buy a home press.

The Politics and Economics of Olives and Olive Oil
This delightful book by an American journalist based in France is much more about the geopolitics, history, and economics of olive growing than about the culinary role of olives and it's oil. It is also much more about olive oil than it is about the fruit, especially since commerce in the oil dwarfs trade in the fruit. Aside from it's being especially well written, it benefits most from it's being written entirely from a first person point of view. Aside from references to selected European Union regulations and documents, all of the text relates conversations between the author and his subjects, the olive growing farmers of the Mediterranian and California. The story starts in the author's own home where he himself raises olives in a small farm in Provence, France. From there, the story travels to other Provencal olive groves, Italy, Spain, Morroco, Greece, and Israel / Palestine.

The book provides a wealth of information for your understanding of olives, olive growing, and the production of olive oil. The most interesting aspects of this story were the domination of olive oil commerce by Italian firms, in spite of the fact that Spain is the world's largest producer of olives and the differences between various methods of extracting oil and how these different processes may affect the quality of the oil.

This book is a very good read, especially for foodies. Just don't expect much information about the culinary and nutritional values of olive oil. There are other books dedicated to olive oil which cover this very well.