Product Description

The Olive Tree of Civilisation has a rich and varied history. The gnarled tree and its fruits has been extolled by bards from Ovid and Homer to Kipling, Tennyson and Nerua. What other fruit provides light, is a fundamental ingredient in perfume and adds joy and flavour at the table? The ancients knew these virtues and olive oil became a key to their religious and political ceremonies, from the temples of Ra in Egypt where lamps burned olive oil, to the temple of Soloman, where kings were anointed with oil based ointments. Christ was offered a sip of oil on the cross; Hanukah is, at its origin, a festival to celebrate olive oil; the tree and its oil are found in the Koran. Today the oil is worshipped by chefs for its flavours and its colours. For decades, cooks and anthropologists have divided Europe along an olive oil/butter boundary; that line is vanishing as olive oil spreads around the globe. This book explores and brings to life the olives's glorious past, with chapters on the fruit's role in

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #451074 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

About the Author
John Train has written many books, of which a number are best-sellers, on investment, etymology and other subjects. He has published several hundred columns, including regular columns in Forbes, Town & Country and the Financial Times. Mark Edward Smith has been working for over twenty-five years specialising in travel reportage, fine art, nude, archaeological and architectural photography. He had more than twenty personal exhibitions, teaches photography in Padua and Venice and has published in Italy, Great Britain, the U.S.A, France, Germany and Japan.

Customer Reviews

Civilization and a Small Ovoid Fruit
This delightful little book was a birthday gift from my delightful goddaughter--she chose well. It's charming, informative and in a genre all its own(?)--the miniature coffee table book.

I enjoyed the book for several reasons:

==It's an excellent introduction to the olive's economic, gastronomic, cultural and artistic history.
==The text conveys a goodly amount of information in a very readable style.
==The color photographs are beautiful--especially those of the many artistic objects, paintings et cetera that include motifs of, and tributes to, this small ovoid fruit that so influenced classsical civilization.
==Like, say, the potato, cane sugar and cotton, over time, this useful Mediterranean product affected trade routes, finance and maritime architecture.
==And, it is quite literally a perfect coffee table book.

All in all, a pleasing, interesting, little book, and, to use that classic phrase: It would make a great gift.
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Now, a personal, full-disclosure aside: I'm Jack Knowlton. a nonfiction children's book writer (on Amazon, of course)--I was the first editorial mentor and tutor to Francesca Manisco, the book's editorial assistant. She was an apt student.