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Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World

As one of Australia’s most prominent and prolific historians, whose literary and academic achievements include some thirty books, Geoffrey Blainey needs little introduction. He does merit mention, however, as a public intellectual whose controversial political comments on contemporary social issues have garnered him disparaging and even vicious criticism. The work under review here, though, is not likely to generate much controversy; it is an engaging and gracefully written narrative history that may well appeal more to the layperson than the expert. In his previous effort at writing world history, A Short History of the World (Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2002), Blainey by his own admission wrote “frugally” about the twentieth century. With A Short History of the Twentieth Century, he intends to remedy this frugality. The work itself is organized into three unequal parts. The first part serves as a very brief introduction to the twentieth century. In a mere twenty-three pages, Blainey touches on a dizzying array of subjects: Europe’s far-flung empires; the rise of the United States to global power; the role of the monarchy and its terrifying enemy, the anarchists (who stand as the precursors to modern terrorism); life in big cities and rural backwaters; and the potential role of absinthe in France’s declining birth rate. The second and third parts of the book are very clearly delineated according to the author’s view that the twentieth century was bifurcated into two extraordinary halves, the first dominated by two massive wars and an unprecedented economic depression, the second by what Blainey terms “a nervous peace” (ix). The latter spans the years between the descending of the Iron Curtain in 1946 and “two dramatic and symbolic events in 2001” (x): the devastation of the World Trade Center in New York by air assassins and the destruction of two huge statues of Buddha in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Despite the many crises that punctuated the latter half of the century, Blainey’s assessment of the period remains positive, to wit: because of the avoidance of immensely destructive global wars, “the second part of the twentieth century proved to be, unexpectedly, one of the most fortunate half-centuries in the long history of the world” (328). When viewing the twentieth century, Blainey applies both a wide angle and a micro lens; the former allows him to present broad historical overviews that keep the reader oriented, whereas the latter reveals specific and tantalizing historical detail. For example, in chapter 8, “Terror and Joy of the Car,” Blainey dryly observes that “in cities the streets were cleaner and the flies fewer in the summer as the piles of horse manure became less frequent” (99). He is equally perceptive when characterizing major historical personalities. Waxing about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rosy attitudes toward Joseph Stalin prior to their first meeting in Tehran in 1942, Blainey concludes that “in retrospect Roosevelt was somewhat like a noble horse eagerly meeting a lion and trusting that the lion would prove to be a vegetarian” (163). This work succeeds in presenting a highly readable, even entertaining, overview of the twentieth century. But the very accessibility of this work comes with a price, for the book is deliberately short on explanations about the origins of events or longterm historical developments. Indeed, Blainey makes a disclaimer to this effect early on in the preface, admitting candidly that “much of the causation has to be inferred from the story itself” (x). While this approach frees the author from wrestling with complex issues, it might leave many readers looking for a more layered approach to this complicated century.