If I retain even half the information in this book, I'd be surprised. He spends a long time on the history of the sugar trade and the early uses of it, which gets a little dry and repetitive, but then it picks up again once he starts getting into the chronology of candy.

Biggest quibbles: how impressed the author was with himself (how many times did he refer to himself as an "international confectionery historian"?), and the lack of serial commas. I understand that this book was published in England, where their laws of punctuation are apparently more lax than here, but his lack of serial commas led to a number of sentences of the "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God" type (not to mention lists that were strung together as "X, y and z and a and b").

It hardly seems fair to downgrade his rating based on a style point on which his country and I disagree, but it's my rating and I can. Though his "I'm so important; I'm the only international confectionery historian in all the world" irked me, too. But his information was good. 3.5 stars, if I could. ( )

Quite interesting. This was a remarkably detailed account of the actual history of candy and how it came to be - not about candy companies like I was expecting. Very well researched though it got bogged down at times with detail. ( )

Disappointingly superficial, coy, self-consciously clever writing.