Olives : The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit

Rating:
Summary: If you love olives, buy this book
Review: As an olive lover, I bought this book as soon as I saw it. Rosenblum discusses the sociological, historical, literary, religious, political, medicinal, geographic, gastronomic, gustatory, criminal, commercial, cultural, and horticultural world of olives, and the passionate and quirky people who love them. Throughout the book, the author describes his own journey from olive indifference to olive lover and grower.

If you like travel writing, this book will especially appeal to you as you follow Rosenblum around the world in his quest for knowledge about, as he describes it in the book's title, this "Noble Fruit." Even if you are not fanatical about olives and olive oil--which I am--it is still a fun, fascinating read.

If I could give this book more stars, I would.

Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be an olive grower to like it
Review: I expected an amazingly well-written book when it was recommended to me. How else could a book about olives make it into print? In fact, the first chapter was near-classic, beginning with the olive you take for granted at the bottom of your martini glass and whisking you through the meaning and world history of this fruit and back to your martini. Unfortunately, the remainder of the book trailed off into a journalistic study of the olive's modern condition in the Mediterranean world with a few too many descriptions of oil presses and related olive-industry machinery. While the remainder of the book lacked the polished cohesiveness of the introductory chapter, the book is still an excellent and well-written account of an oft-overlooked fruit. After all, the author did make the "little green lump" at the bottom of my martini enticing enough for me to experiment with a few gourmet oils and plant an olive tree in my backyard.

Rating:
Summary: Passion on Paper
Review: I'm gorging myself with olives: the fruit, the oil, this book. There are books you re-read years gone, but I found myself devouring clumps of this book just days after reading it in the conventional way. Mort Rosenblum could have given us an encyclopedic guide to the "noble fruit," but instead he follows his passions--and does first class journalistic digging--to press out the finest extra virgin essence of his subject. I also like the way Rosenblum writes, as much a friend as an authority. France, and its olive oils, comes first on the author's list, but he also does justice to subjects as disparate as the place of olives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the promising growth of the high-end California olive oil industry, and even the seemingly bottomless corruption on the olive oil front in the European Community. Few effective journalists write with such literary flair, without seeming to try too hard. A winner.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Rating:
Summary: If you love olives, buy this book
Review: This book presents a very comprehensive overview of olives, olive oil, and olive producers in a style that is part travelogue, part anthropology, and part history (without footnotes). Rosenblum takes us on a tour of the Mediterranean, from France, to Palestine, Greece to Tunisia, and Spain to Bosnia. In each locale, he interviews local olive growers on the way they tend their trees, pick their fruit, and press their oil, and of course, he never refuses a sample. I found the first chapter, which started with some literary-historical introductions a little shaky, but after that I couldn't put the book down. Rosenblum's explanations as to why different olive oils have varying qualities were very clear. They will come in handy next time I'm faced with selecting a brand of olive oil at the market. Although Rosenblum mentions the curing of olives in each country, most of the text focuses on the production of oil. I would have been interested in reading more about table olives, but perhaps that's because I'm living in Dubai, where every supermarket deli counter has a minimum of 20 different kinds of olives to choose from. Even though this book is not a cookbook, it does contain a handful of recipes.

Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: This book presents a very comprehensive overview of olives, olive oil, and olive producers in a style that is part travelogue, part anthropology, and part history (without footnotes). Rosenblum takes us on a tour of the Mediterranean, from France, to Palestine, Greece to Tunisia, and Spain to Bosnia. In each locale, he interviews local olive growers on the way they tend their trees, pick their fruit, and press their oil, and of course, he never refuses a sample. I found the first chapter, which started with some literary-historical introductions a little shaky, but after that I couldn't put the book down. Rosenblum's explanations as to why different olive oils have varying qualities were very clear. They will come in handy next time I'm faced with selecting a brand of olive oil at the market. Although Rosenblum mentions the curing of olives in each country, most of the text focuses on the production of oil. I would have been interested in reading more about table olives, but perhaps that's because I'm living in Dubai, where every supermarket deli counter has a minimum of 20 different kinds of olives to choose from. Even though this book is not a cookbook, it does contain a handful of recipes.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT READ!
Review: This delightful book by an American journalist based in France is much more about the geopolitics, history, and economics of olive growing than about the culinary role of olives and it's oil. It is also much more about olive oil than it is about the fruit, especially since commerce in the oil dwarfs trade in the fruit. Aside from it's being especially well written, it benefits most from it's being written entirely from a first person point of view. Aside from references to selected European Union regulations and documents, all of the text relates conversations between the author and his subjects, the olive growing farmers of the Mediterranian and California. The story starts in the author's own home where he himself raises olives in a small farm in Provence, France. From there, the story travels to other Provencal olive groves, Italy, Spain, Morroco, Greece, and Israel / Palestine.

The book provides a wealth of information for your understanding of olives, olive growing, and the production of olive oil. The most interesting aspects of this story were the domination of olive oil commerce by Italian firms, in spite of the fact that Spain is the world's largest producer of olives and the differences between various methods of extracting oil and how these different processes may affect the quality of the oil.

This book is a very good read, especially for foodies. Just don't expect much information about the culinary and nutritional values of olive oil. There are other books dedicated to olive oil which cover this very well.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like fiction--
Review: This is a beautiful book. If you enjoy olives, you'll find yourself caught up in Mort Rosenblum's warm, engaging writing style. I've given several friends this book along with jars of olives and olive oil as a gift. Each time, the recipient has said they were surprised to receive a book about olives, but once they started reading it they couldn't put it down. This is definitely one of those wonderful word of mouth books that good cooks want to share with eachother.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT READ!
Review: This is a great book! I bought a copy while visiting an olive orchard in Australia. Anyone interested in developing an olive orchard would find this book useful. Excellent travel writing to boot! I've even planted my own kalamata olive tree after reading the book . I'm so inspired I might even buy a home press.