UK Kirkus Review » At first glance, a book on the subject of the world's most common sweetening agent doesn't exactly set the pulses racing. Yet there's much to recommend this tightly written tale of 'very few heroes and many villains', which manages to combine intrigue, dirty deeds and hugely important historical happenings. Macinnis's deftly humorous touch combines with his forays into self-deprecation and gently ironic prodding to get his message across. He even opens with a quote from Joseph Conrad acknowledging the lack of potential in covering 'the dreariest subject I can think of'. He then joyously proceeds to prove Mr Conrad wrong by covering some 9,000 years, 150 countries and all the major religions to reveal the truth about something that we all take for granted yet 'has influenced all our lives'. It's fair to say that sugar itself plays second fiddle to the complexities of human nature, and Macinnis acknowledges how the delightfully sweet substance was only one of any number of natural riches which our species would have squabbled over. From the volcanoes of Indonesia at the end of the last Ice Age through the side effects of dangerously volatile rum to sugar's ubiquitous presence in today's processed foodstuffs, Macinnis leaves no base uncovered, and no stone unturned in his research. Geographical phenomena, complex botany, man's inhumanity to man, and the payback of those dreaded visits to the dentist all jostle for space in the author's wonderfully woven consideration. The more ground he covers, the more the reader realizes the significance of the subject matter, and the more impressive becomes Macinnis's achievement in drawing it all together in such a concise and entertaining fashion. (Kirkus UK)

US Kirkus Review » From Australian science writer and broadcaster Macinnis, an informative and readable history of the simple substance that changed the world and often brought out the worst in people. Sugar cane, a member of the grass family, was first discovered in the New Guinea jungle some 9,000 years ago. The locals found that chewing and sucking it was pleasurable; eventually they learned to cultivate it. A widely grown crop in the ancient civilized world, sugar's darker history began when the returning Crusaders brought it into Europe. There, it was a luxury item, being both capital- and labor-intensive, until the opening of the New World, particularly the Caribbean islands and Brazil, gave European colonizers the abundant land and suitable climate necessary for growing cane. Because a huge labor force was required to work the plantations, the author writes, "Sugar and slavery seemed to go hand in hand." Surveying the sweet stuff's bitterest legacy, Macinnis unsparingly describes the appalling cruelty and dangerous working conditions inflicted on slaves and their not-much-better-off counterparts, indentured servants. He also writes of sugar's influence on policy matters and history, such as Napoleon's decision to hang onto France's sugar-growing colonies and sell the others to the US in the Louisiana Purchase. Blessed with a fine sense of humor as well as a sense of history, the author leavens his otherwise dramatic tale with lighter moments and such oddities as a four-volume 18th-century treatise on sugar-making written in blank verse, from which he quotes. Only a hardhearted few could resist priceless gems like, "Of composts shall the Muse descend to sing, / Nor soil her heavenly plumes? The sacred Muse / Nought sordid deems, but what is base; nought fair / Unless true Virtue stamp it with her seal." Lively and entertaining: a splendid saga for the general reader. (6 maps) (Kirkus Reviews)