22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun but Accurate?, March 4, 2008
This review is from: Citrus: A History (Hardcover)
I must admit I only made it to page 42 of this book. Citrus is written in the type of light but informative style that I like in "science for the educated layman" genre ("Cod" by Kurlansky being a great example thereof). The author's enthusiasm is infectious, even if he does wander to and fro among his topics bit more than I'd like.
My real complaint: errors. Olives were not brought to Spain by the Arabs nor Cocoa to the New World by the Spaniards/Portuguese. These are not obscure facts. If he's made these glaring mistakes, how can I trust those lesser known (but potentially fascinating facts) he puts forth about citrus? I can't. So I stopped reading. Alas.
Steven Mlodinow
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Lemon, February 21, 2008
This review is from: Citrus: A History (Hardcover)
Reportedly, the author, a retired chemistry professor, has written more than 200 scientific articles. Such publications are characterized by sharp focus, tight organization and succinctness. Regrettably, all of those qualities are lacking from this book. What purports to be a history is, instead, a kaleidiscopic array of commentaries centering about citrus fruits. At time the relevant subject all but disappears in digressions. Having introduced the orangerie, Laszlo proceeds to describe Versailles at the time of the Sun King, the modern tourists that flock there, and the classical sculptures in the gardens. Only after two pages does he return to the Orangerie itself.
Clemantines, he asserts, "are named for Father Clement Rodier who invented (sic!)them. We are then given an account of the monk's life , then learning that "we do not know the part Rodier played in this discovery" [of the clemantine].
Perhaps Laszlo can be forgiven for dwelling on the chemical properties of the citrus although I doubt that the reader needs to know that there are both left-limone and right-limone.
For those interested in an overview of these fruits, The Great Citrus Book is a much better choice. It offers a concise history, photos and brief descriptions of a wide variety of citrus, and some interesting recipes that are much more imaginative than those in the Laszlo book.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A grab-bag of snippets padded with personal anecdotes, June 9, 2008
This review is from: Citrus: A History (Hardcover)
As soon as I had read a few chapters of Citrus, by Pierre Laszlo, I regretted wasting my money on this superficial excuse for history. It gives the impression of having been hastily cut and pasted from the results of a Google search on "citrus".
There is no real connecting narrative. The book is just a disjointed compilation of snippets of information, linked by an irritating, chatty style of writing, and interspersed with self-serving anecdotes from Laszlo's life. It is as much about providing a forum for Laszlo to strut and preen as it is about citrus.
In one place he says "good writing, in like manner to inhaling a fragrance from citrus, extracts from simple words a whiff of an aroma with which to flavour sentences". This is simply under-graduate silliness.
In another place, Laszlo says that Ivrea is "best known as the location of Olivetti's headquarters", then goes on to describe the famous Ivrea "battle of the oranges" for which it is probably far better known.
Laszlo claims that "there is no basic difference in technical sophistication between the manufacture of gasoline . . . and the production of orange juice". This is just a glib one liner that happens to be wrong. I have worked as a chemical engineer in oil refineries and know a little about what is involved.
Much material is marginally relevant to the history of citrus fruits and seems to have been included to bulk out a thin story.
Information is repeated over and over. I got sick of reading variants of the phrase "Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid." No wonder the bored reader suspects that the book is a cut-and-paste job.
Numerous recipes are also included, but they have no historical relevance, nor do they advance any argument in the book, which could easliy be catalogued under Cookery. They are simply there to reinforce some personal anecdote about Laszlo's life and to serve as padding to bulk out the book.
Platitudes and opinions are freely given: "American English and British English differ slightly in vocabulary and spelling". The dominating statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio is "downright ugly".
There are no footnotes, nor any bibliography, which is unusual in a work claiming to be a history of citrus. There is a 36-page grab-bag of fairly random notes at the end of the book, with a reference to Laszlo's website.
Laszlo's earlier book, "Salt: Grain of Life", was quite readable, so I was disappointed to find "Citrus" to be so poorly written and edited.
The book is trivial and seems to have been cobbled together quickly and at minimal cost. I felt cheated and misled by much of the publicity blurb written about it.
Don't waste your money. Do as Laszlo seems to have done and Google "citrus" instead.
Perhaps I have been a bit unfair on this particular book. Many others in the same genre (the history of familiar things) also suffer from padding and sloppy editing.
The genre has become very popular since Dava Sobel's excellent "Longitude". Authors and publishers now rush books into print on subjects that don't really justify a book, so padding becomes a necessity if readers are not to feel cheated.
I guess that is what really irks me - being taken for a mug who can be exploited by being promised caviar but actually fed pap in the hope that it will not be noticed.
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