100 books like Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate

By Susan J. Terrio,

Here are 100 books that Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate fans have personally recommended if you like Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Made in Mexico: Zapotec Weavers and the Global Ethnic Art Market

Alanna Cant Author Of The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture

From my list on people who make things for a living.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.

Alanna's book list on people who make things for a living

Alanna Cant Why did Alanna love this book?

Bill Wood’s engaging and accessible book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in travelling to Mexico or Mexican arts and crafts. Based on research with Zapotec weavers from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Made in Mexico shows how it is impossible to understand how and why such items are made today without also knowing about the ways that Oaxaca and Zapotec people are marketed as part of an industry that sells authenticity and “Zapotecness.” Through clear analysis of the marketing of Oaxaca as a tourism destination and the making and marketing of Zapotec textiles as indigenous art and artifacts in both Mexico and the United States, Made in Mexico shows how Mexican craftworks today are very much global cultural commodities.  

By William Warner Wood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Made in Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Made in Mexico introduces us to the people, places, and ideas that create Zapotec textiles and give them meaning. From Oaxaca, where guides escort tourists to weavers' homes and then to the shops and markets where weavings are sold, to the galleries and stores of the American Southwest, where textiles are displayed and purchased as home decor or ethnic artwork, W. Warner Wood's ethnographic account crosses the border in both directions to describe how the international market for Native American art shapes weavers' design choices. Everyone involved in this enterprise draws on images of rustic authenticity and indigenous tradition connecting…


Book cover of Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art

Alanna Cant Author Of The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture

From my list on people who make things for a living.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.

Alanna's book list on people who make things for a living

Alanna Cant Why did Alanna love this book?

I love this book because it combines an account of the historical development of the market for acrylic paintings by Pintupi Aboriginal Australian artists with a critical analysis of the ways that contemporary art markets create the idea of the ‘Aboriginal artist’ in the first place. Because Myers had already conducted research on Pintupi culture, rituals, and personhood before he came to write this book, he is able to fully explore the aesthetic and cosmological processes that underpin the actual practices of painting that his research participants use in their work.

By also investigating how dealers, museum curators, and collectors in Australian and international Aboriginal art worlds view and value Pintupi painters and their works, Myers shows very clearly the changes in meaning and value that take place when indigenous material culture circulates as artistic and ethnic commodities in national and international markets.

By Fred R. Myers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Painting Culture as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Painting Culture tells the complex story of how, over the past three decades, the acrylic "dot" paintings of central Australia were transformed into objects of international high art, eagerly sought by upscale galleries and collectors. Since the early 1970s, Fred R. Myers has studied-often as a participant-observer-the Pintupi, one of several Aboriginal groups who paint the famous acrylic works. Describing their paintings and the complicated cultural issues they raise, Myers looks at how the paintings represent Aboriginal people and their culture and how their heritage is translated into exchangeable values. He tracks the way these paintings become high art as…


Book cover of Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad

Alanna Cant Author Of The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture

From my list on people who make things for a living.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.

Alanna's book list on people who make things for a living

Alanna Cant Why did Alanna love this book?

In Thiefing a Chance, Rebecca Prentice shows us what life is like for women who make clothing in a factory in Trinidad – a livelihood shared by more than 75 million people worldwide, most of them in the Global South. I recommend this book because although Prentice discusses the ways that late-capitalism and neoliberal structural reforms have produced the difficult economic and working conditions that her research participants must cope with, she also shows how the women are not passive subjects in these processes. She documents how they take every opportunity on the factory floor to informally gain skills and to make ‘illicit’ garments out of spare materials, which they can sell outside of work.

However, Prentice resists the temptation to analyze these practices as ‘social resistance,’ and instead shows how such informal practices actually encourage these women to embrace neoliberal identities of competitive, enterprising individuals.

By Rebecca Prentice,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Thiefing a Chance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When an IMF-backed program of liberalization opened Trinidad’s borders to foreign ready-made apparel, global competition damaged the local industry and unraveled worker entitlements and expectations but also presented new economic opportunities for engaging the “global” market. This fascinating ethnography explores contemporary life in the Signature Fashions garment factory, where the workers attempt to exploit gaps in these new labor configurations through illicit and informal uses of the factory, a practice they colloquially refer to as “thiefing a chance.”

Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork, author Rebecca Prentice combines a vivid picture of factory life, first-person accounts, and anthropological analysis to…


Book cover of Pumpkin Soup: A Picture Book

Alanna Cant Author Of The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture

From my list on people who make things for a living.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Canadian social anthropologist living in England, and my research is about material culture and heritage in Mexico. I have always been fascinated by the ways that people make their cultures through objects, food, and space; this almost certainly started with my mum who is always making something stitched, knitted, savoury, or sweet, often all at the same time. I hope that you enjoy the books on my list – I chose them as they each have something important to teach us about how our consumption of things affects those who make them, often in profound ways.

Alanna's book list on people who make things for a living

Alanna Cant Why did Alanna love this book?

This book is highly recommended by myself and my small son, Adam. Pumpkin Soup captures something essential about making things for a living that is not often discussed in more academic texts: how difficult it can be to collaborate with others. The book tells the story of a squirrel, a cat, and a duck who make pumpkin soup together every night. All goes well until Duck decides he wants to do things his way, and a loud and angry argument ensues! The book does not end with a moral for small children about cooperation, but something altogether more ethnographic and familiar to those who work with others – another argument!  

By Helen Cooper,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pumpkin Soup as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

Cat, Duck and Squirrel live in an old white cabin, with a pumpkin patch in the garden. Every day Cat slices up some pumpkin, Squirrel stirs in some water and Duck tips in some salt to make the perfect pumpkin soup...Until the day Duck wants to do the stirring...This is a funny, rhythmical story about friendship and sharing, with fabulous animal characters, illustrated in glowing autumnal colours with a brilliant CD featuring music and sound effects!


Book cover of The Chocolate Thief

Amy Watson Author Of Closer to Okay

From my list on using food as a catalyst to a better life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I used to write a food blog because I love stories about food, be they fiction or non-fiction. Food has the power to bring joy, healing, love, anger, sadness, etc.—you name the emotion and food can evoke it or remedy it. I’ve suffered from depression most of my life and the kitchen makes me feel better. Hearing that my chocolate cookies are amazing heals my heart a little at a time. Food and emotion go together like peanut butter and jelly, and I’m the first to pick up a book that skillfully employs both.

Amy's book list on using food as a catalyst to a better life

Amy Watson Why did Amy love this book?

I am in love with Paris. I went there once for work. I was there for four days and gained eight pounds. The pastries, the chocolate, the bread, the wine. Oh, the endless butter and sugar. So, a romance set in a Parisian Chocolaterie? I’m all in. There’s also a seduction set whilst walking up a staircase that’s the sexiest thing I have ever read and it’s not even close. 

Slyvain Marquis is every woman’s dream in that he woos them with chocolate. The descriptions of the flavors, textures, and smells are transporting. I’m so sad that a real box of his chocolates will never exist in the real world.

By Laura Florand,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Chocolate Thief as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Paris

Breathtakingly beautiful, the City of Light seduces the senses, its cobbled streets thrumming with possibility. For American Cade Corey, it's a dream come true, if only she can get one infuriating French chocolatier to sign on the dotted line. . .

Chocolate

Melting, yielding yet firm, exotic, its secrets are intimately known to Sylvain Marquis. But turn them over to a brash American waving a fistful of dollars? Jamais. Not unless there's something much more delectable on the table. . .

Stolen Pleasure

Whether confections taken from a locked shop or kisses in the dark, is there anything sweeter?…


Book cover of Chocolat

Jennifer Moorman Author Of The Baker's Man

From my list on magical realism to enchant you and lift your spirits.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated with the extraordinary ever since I read Madeleine L ’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time in middle school. I was also enchanted by Dorothy’s trip from black-and-white Kansas into colorful Oz. I once heard Neil Gaiman mention the “hyperreality” of life, and I thought, Yes! That’s how I want to see the world—the magic everywhere. I voraciously read not only magical realism books but also fantasy. These stories heighten my awareness of the wonder in everything and in everyone, and they deepen the richness of the stories I tell and write.

Jennifer's book list on magical realism to enchant you and lift your spirits

Jennifer Moorman Why did Jennifer love this book?

This story is truly mesmerizing with its quirky and quite sensuous tale.

I am entranced by the colors, the tastes, the scents, and the whimsy that lures me into the plot with its wonderful descriptions.

This novel is a celebration of the senses, and while of a more serious nature, it’s full of pleasure, love, and feel-good sparks.

By Joanne Harris,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Chocolat as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Even before it was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, Chocolat entranced readers with its mix of hedonism, whimsy, and, of course, chocolate.

In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows.

Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch?

Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation,…


Book cover of Kiki's Memoirs

Jim Fergus Author Of The Memory of Love

From my list on 1920’s Paris les années folles - the “crazy years”.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a young boy, I dreamed of becoming a novelist. I was fascinated and inspired by Les Années Folles, The Crazy Years of 1920’s Paris, when artists of all disciplines, from countries all around the world came together electrifying the City of Lights with an artistic passion. My mother was French. France is my 2nd country, where I spend a portion of each year. While researching my novel, The Memory of Love, I stayed in the actual atelier of my protagonist Chrysis Jungbluth, a young, largely unknown painter of that era. I visited, too, the addresses of dozens of the artists who bring the era alive again in our imagination. 

Jim's book list on 1920’s Paris les années folles - the “crazy years”

Jim Fergus Why did Jim love this book?

This is an intimate, first-person account of 1920’s Paris, and the life of one of the most central characters of the period—the model, singer, and artist, Kiki of Montparnasse as she was known by all. Born in Burgundy in 1901, christened Alice Prin, and raised by her grandmother in abject poverty, at age twelve she was shipped off to Paris to live with the mother she had never known.

The young Alice’s fierce survival instincts immediately translated into a precocious thirst for experience. At fourteen she had her “first contact with art” when she began posing nude for a sculptor. Thereafter, she assumed the name and embraced life as the irrepressible Kiki. Lover of Man Ray, beloved friend of Soutine, Jean Cocteau, and many other artists of the period, she became the toast of Montparnasse, one of the century’s first truly independent women. Man Ray, Foujita, Kisling, and others immortalized…

By Billy Klüver (editor), Julie Martin (editor), Man Ray (photographer)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kiki's Memoirs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Featuring an introduction by Ernest Hemingway and published for the first time in America, the unexpurgated memoirs of a model who reigned over Montparnasse in the twenties created a sensation when they first appeared in France in 1929.


Book cover of The New Paris: The People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement

Janet Hubbard Author Of Champagne

From my list on modern day France containing food and wine.

Why am I passionate about this?

I went to Paris the first time when I was nineteen. I was sitting in a cheap restaurant when a man entered carrying a burlap sack filled with escargots, and put some on my plate (all very unsanitary) for me to taste. Delicious! I was in France in the 1970s when Robert Parker was discovering French wine. (We didn’t meet then, but did after my series was published many years later.)  Subsequent stays in Paris and other areas of France (Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy) afforded me a food and wine sensibility that over decades has permeated my lifestyle, my friendships—and my writing.

Janet's book list on modern day France containing food and wine

Janet Hubbard Why did Janet love this book?

The description above segues nicely into The New Paris by Lindsey Traumata, published in 2017. Traumata now has a second book published, and hosts a podcast, and is popular on social media. I have spent at least a month (and sometimes three) in Paris annually over the past six years and think of Traumata’s first book as a good friend. She writes wonderful profiles of people, and she keeps readers updated about bistros, winemakers, new cuisine. Her writing is elegant, and I read her descriptions as avidly as I do a novel, constantly making notes. So different from the usual guidebooks.

By Lindsey Tramuta,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The New Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The city long-adored for its medieval beauty, old-timey brasseries, and corner cafes has even more to offer today. In the last few years, a flood of new ideas and creative locals has infused a once-static, traditional city with a new open-minded sensibility and energy. Journalist Lindsey Tramuta offers detailed insight into the rapidly evolving worlds of food, wine, pastry, coffee, beer, fashion, and design in the delightful city of Paris. Tramuta puts the spotlight on the new trends and people that are making France's capital a more whimsical, creative, vibrant, and curious place to explore than its classical reputation might…


Book cover of Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

Sharon Farmer Author Of Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor

From my list on the culture of France and medieval modern poverty.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started out as a religion major in college, but soon became frustrated with the abstract thoughts of privileged white males. I wanted to understand the passions and struggles of ordinary people, and soon became convinced that the examination of the distant past sheds important light on the present. It’s not that I don’t care about the world around me right now. Rather, I am convinced that those who look only at this decade, this century, or even the last century fail to recognize some of the most powerful cultural forces that have shaped our most fundamental understandings of gender, wealth, poverty, work, and so much more.

Sharon's book list on the culture of France and medieval modern poverty

Sharon Farmer Why did Sharon love this book?

If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions I’ve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.

By Graham Robb,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Parisians as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction, of the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten.

A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. A well-dressed woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank. For…


Book cover of Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris

Hilary Bradt Author Of A Connemara Journey: A Thousand Miles on Horseback Through Western Ireland

From my list on travel with animals.

Why am I passionate about this?

Until I did my own animal-accompanied journey with Mollie and Peggy in 1984, my only association with animals on the trail was inadvertently with a collection of cockroaches in my backpack. It was when Bradt decided to add to their anthologies with a collection of stories about travelling with animals in 2018, Beastly Journeys, that I was able to read a wide variety of books on the topic. A delightful exercise!

Hilary's book list on travel with animals

Hilary Bradt Why did Hilary love this book?

I discovered this fascinating and extraordinary story when I was researching tales about travelling with animals for Beastly Journeys. Unlike the other four books in my list, this one has the animal as the central character. And what an animal! Zarafa was captured as a calf in what is now Ethiopia in a plan to cement relationships between the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt and Charles V of France. The year was 1826 and a giraffe had never before been seen in France. Zarafa did the first part of her journey strapped to the back on a camel, and then – surely more comfortably – down the Nile and across the Mediterranean on a brigantine.

A hole was cut in the deck which allowed Zarafa to travel with her body in the hold, while her head and neck enjoyed the human company on deck. From Marseille she was walked, with…

By Michael Allin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Zarafa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In October 1826, a ship arrived at Marseille carrying the first giraffe ever seen in France. A royal offering from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, to King Charles X, she had already traveled 2,000 miles down the Nile to Alexandria, from where she had sailed across the Mediterranean standing in the hold, her long neck and head protruding through a hole cut in the deck. In the spring of 1827, after wintering in Marseille, she was carefully walked 550 miles to Paris to the delight of thousands of onlookers.

The viceroy's tribute was politically motivated: He commanded the Turkish…


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