The Business of Halloween
Trick-or-treating is big business! The chocolate industry is expected to reach $24.9 billion by 2027 (Mintel), and seasonal non-chocolate candy sales "represent a notable portion of candy sales and are growing" (IBISWorld). To learn more about the history of chocolate, candy, and the companies at the center of this industry, check out these books available on the shelves at Pardee or online through the BU Libraries Catalog. Happy Halloween from the Pardee staff!
Featured Books for Halloween
Pez : From Austrian Invention to American Icon
Location: Online
PEZ is an American classic and a staple of many childhood memories. Take an inside look, through words and vintage images of this iconic brand. Yet it originated in Austria, where PEZ began in 1927 as compressed peppermint tablets marketed as an alternative to smoking. Upon arrival in the United States in 1952, PEZ quickly took a new direction, adding fruit flavors and three-dimensional character heads to top the dispensers. Now produced in Orange, Connecticut, the iconic PEZ brand is available in over eighty countries, selling more than sixty-five million dispensers annually and inspiring collectors and fans worldwide. Join the world's first and only official PEZ historian, Shawn Peterson, on a journey of sweet proportions for an inside look at the world's most cherished interactive candy.
The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9200.U54 H473 1999
Forrest Mars and Milton Hershey were visionaries who built vast kingdoms of candy through the force of their imagination and determination. In this eight-year investigation of the candy business, former Washington Post reporter Joel Glenn Brenner takes us inside a world as mysterious as Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, where industrial spies jockey for trade secrets and paranoid executives fight an all-out war for America's sweet tooth.Forrest Mars, the "Howard Hughes of candy", is one of the most private and innovative entrepreneurs in America, a brilliant autocrat who built one of the world's most unique companies.
Books for Halloween
Hammond's Candies : History Handmade in Denver by
In 1920, Carl T. Hammond founded his company with a commitment to quality. He single-handedly developed recipes, sold candy and handled everything else required to run the small operation. Nearly a century after that humble beginning, Hammond's Candies still clings to that original vision, creating prized confections by hand. The Mitchell Sweet, first introduced in the 1930s, is still a top seller, and visitors touring the factory can view the original machinery being used in production. Author Corky Thompson traces the history and growth of this family-owned company from 1920 until its sale at the end of the twentieth century and follows its transition under new ownership to the present time.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014
Sweet As Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America's Favorite Pleasure by
There's more to candy than its sugary taste. As this delightful book shows, candy has a remarkable history, most of it sweet, some of it bitter. The author, a food historian and candy expert, tells the whole story, from the harvesting of the marshmallow plant in ancient Egypt to the mass-produced candy innovations of the twentieth century. Along the way, the reader is treated to an assortment of entertaining facts and colorful characters. These include a deposed Mexican president who ignited the modern chewing gum industry, the little-known son of a slave woman who invented the sugar-processing machine still in use today, and the Native Americans who created an important food by mixing fruit with dried meat. The name of the product was pemmican. The author traces humanity's changing palette over the centuries as roots, barks, and even bugs were savored. She surveys the many uses of chocolate from the cacao bean enjoyed by Olmec Indians to candy bars carried by GIs in World War II. As she notes, many candies are associated with world's fairs and other major historical events. Fun and informative, this book will make you appreciate the candy you love even more and help you discover new treats.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2016
In Chocolate We Trust: The Hershey Company Town Unwrapped by
In Chocolate We Trust takes readers inside modern-day Hershey, Pennsylvania, headquarters of the iconic Hershey brand. A destination for chocolate enthusiasts since the early 1900s, Hershey has transformed from a model industrial town into a multifaceted suburbia powered by philanthropy. At its heart lies the Milton Hershey School Trust, a charitable trust with a mandate to serve "social orphans" and a $12 billion endowment amassed from Hershey Company profits. The trust is a longstanding source of pride for people who call Hershey home and revere its benevolent capitalist founder--but in recent years it has become a subject of controversy and intrigue. Using interviews, participant observation, and archival research, anthropologist Peter Kurie returns to his hometown to examine the legacy of the Hershey Trust among local residents, company employees, and alumni of the K-12 Milton Hershey School. He arrives just as a scandal erupts that raises questions about the outsized power of the private trust over public life. Kurie draws on diverse voices across the community to show how philanthropy stirs passions and interests well beyond intended beneficiaries. In Chocolate We Trust reveals the cultural significance of Hershey as a forerunner to socially conscious corporations and the cult of the entrepreneur-philanthropist. The Hershey story encapsulates the dreams and wishes of today's consumer-citizens: the dream of becoming personally successful, and the wish that the most affluent among us will serve the common good.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
Sugar: A Global History by
It's no surprise that sugar has been on our minds for millennia. First cultivated in New Guinea around 8,000 B.C.E., this addictive sweetener has since come to dominate our appetites--whether in candy, desserts, soft drinks, or even pasta sauces--for better and for worse. In this book, Andrew F. Smith offers a fascinating history of this simultaneously beloved and reviled ingredient, holding its incredible value as a global commodity up against its darker legacies of slavery and widespread obesity. As Smith demonstrates, sugar's past is chockfull of determined adventurers: relentless sugar barons and plantation owners who worked alongside plant breeders, food processors, distributors, and politicians to build a business based on our cravings. Exploring both the sugarcane and sugar beet industries, he tells story after story of those who have made fortunes and those who have met demise all because of sugar's simple but profound hold on our palates. Delightful and surprisingly action-packed, this book offers a layered and definitive tale of sugar and the many people who have been caught in its spell--from barons to slaves, from chefs to the countless among us born with that insatiable devil, the sweet tooth.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2015
Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams by
THIS BOOK IS NEITHER LICENSED NOR SPONSORED BY THE HERSHEY COMPANY. Hershey. The name means chocolate to America and the world, but as Michael D'Antonio reveals, it also stands for an inspiring man and a uniquely successful experiment in community and capitalism that produced a business empire devoted to a higher purpose. One of the twentieth century's most eccentric and idealistic titans of industry, Milton S. Hershey brought affordable milk chocolate to America, creating and then satisfying the chocoholic urges of millions. He pioneered techniques of branding, mass production, and marketing, and gained widespread fame as the Chocolate King. But as he developed massive factories, Cuban sugar plantations, and a vacation wonderland called Hershey Park, M.S. never lost sight of a grander goal. Determined that his wealth produce a lasting legacy, he tried to create perfect places where his workers could live, perfect schools for their children, and a perfect charity to salvage the lives of needy children in perpetuity. Along the way, he overcame his personal childhood traumas, as well as the death, after a short and intensely romantic marriage, of the one woman he ever loved. In childhood, Milton was torn by the constant conflicts between his stern mother and starry-eyed father. He watched his father go bust in the oil fields and his sister die of scarlet fever. As a young man he failed with businesses in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago. Milton finally succeeded in Lancaster, thanks to a caramel recipe copied from another confectioner and a lucky break provided by a British importer. Then, at the history-shaping Columbian Exhibition, Milton found the chocolate-making technology that would allow him to bring a new taste to America. When they heard about his plan to build a chocolate empire complete with its own little city in rural Pennsylvania, his friends said he needed a legal guardian. Ten years later, Milton controlled the U.S. chocolate market, and his town, Hershey, Pennsylvania, was the ideal American village. Factory workers lived in graceful homes. Their children attended the best schools. Local parks, libraries, and theaters rivaled the best in big cities. Trains brought thousands of tourists every day, who flocked to see the miracle town, the Hershey zoo, and an enormous amusement park. Not content with these accomplishments, a childless M.S. Hershey founded an orphanage for boys at his family homestead. After his wife Catherine's death, the press revealed that he had secretly willed his entire estate to the Hershey Industrial School, as it was called. This was only the beginning of his giving. Through the Great Depression, Milton Hershey used his fortune to fund a massive building program that kept all his workers employed and spared the community the real hardships of the era. Before he died, he even gave away his mansion, keeping just two rooms for himself. Remarkable as Hershey was, his legacy is even more powerful. It includes the $8 billion Hershey Trust (the single largest private fund for children in the world), an idyllic company town in central Pennsylvania, and a corporation that proves that the ideals of community and commerce can lead to profit. This first-ever, major biography of an American icon paints a vivid picture of what Milton S. Hershey accomplished as the ultimate progressive businessman. Hershey's life suggests a kind of capitalism that seems warmer, and more personal. He was a gambler, raconteur, despot, and servant. And he stands as a rare, and perhaps unique, example of ambition, altruism, ego, and humility.
Location: Pardee Stacks HD9200.U52 H4715 2006Publication Date: 2006
Sweets and Candy: A Global History by
With eye-popping colors and shapes, intense flavors, and curious textures, sweets and candy are beloved by people of all ages worldwide. They provide minor treats, lessons in economics for children, and colorful giveaways to mark festivities. They can be admired for beauty and novelty, make ideal gifts, and can even be used to woo. But these seemingly inconsequential indulgences are freighted with centuries of changing cultural attitudes, social and economic history, emotional attachments, and divergent views on the salubriousness of sugar. How did confectionary become so popular? Why do we value concentrated sweetness in such varied, gooey forms? And in the face of ongoing health debates, why persist in eating sweets? From marzipan pigs and nutty nougat to bubblegum and bonbons, Sweets and Candy looks beneath the glamour and sparkle to explore the sticky history of confectionary. Methods for making sweets can be traced back to the importance of sugar in Arabic medicine and the probable origin of this practice in ancient India--a place where sweetness is still important for both humans and gods. Gorging on gobstoppers from these early candy antecedents to modern-day delectables, Laura Mason describes the bewildering and fascinating ways in which different cultures have made, consumed, valued, and adored sweets throughout history. Featuring a selection of mouthwatering illustrations and scrumptious recipes to try at home, this global candy trail will delight sweet-toothed foodies and history buffs everywhere.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
The Baker Chocolate Company by
In 1765, Dr. James Baker of Dorchester stumbled upon Irishman John Hannon crying on the banks of the mighty Neponset River. Hannon, though penniless, possessed the rare skills required to create chocolate, a delicacy exclusive to Europe, and Baker, with pockets bursting, wished to make a name for himself. Using a mill powered by the same river upon which they met, the duo built America's oldest and most beloved manufacturer of this rich treat. Local historian Anthony Sammarco details the delicious saga of Massachusetts's Baker Chocolate Company, from Hannon's mysterious disappearance and the famed La Belle Chocolatiere advertising campaign to cacao bean smuggling sparked by Revolutionary War blockades. Both bitter and sweet, this tale is sure to tickle your taste buds.
Location: Mugar Stacks HD9200.U54 B357 2009Publication Date: 2009
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