From World to World – In Search of Perfumes by Dominique Roques

This highly personal combination of memoir, travel experiences, history, and a gentle but insistent treatise on politics and environmental sustainability has been impeccably translated from the original French. 

The author is a businessman whose work caused him to spend decades traversing both familiar and remote locations around the world sourcing the essential oils produced from trees and plants that create the world's most treasured and sophisticated fragrances. His travels took him to the places and resources most recognizable, such as the roses of Bulgaria, and lavender of Provence, to the most mysterious, such as the Amazon jungles of Venezuela for tonka beans, Laos for benzoin, and Madagascar for vanilla. Some of the places he visited could be physically or politically dangerous: Haiti for vetiver, Somaliland for frankincense. 

It is an eye-opening and even mind-bending account that combines the details of the materials and production of these ingredients with the mystical and legendary allure of locations that are far from top of mind for most Westerners, but that doesn't stint on relating the dangers of exploitation of raw materials and the greed of those who profit from them – he does not hesitate to comment on the contrast of the poverty of the workers in some of these places versus the governments and others who manipulate their natural resources as well as their people.

Despite that grounding in the disturbing realities of past colonialism and current profiteering in Africa, Asia, Caribbean and South America, the romantic allure, mysticism, and myth surrounding so many of the substances and extracts that he seeks, and the famous perfumes that are the result combine in the wonderful stories that the author tells. As he says in the prologue, "Perfumes are at once familiar to us, yet mysterious.", then goes on to mention the <i>Diorissimo</i> that his mother wore, and describes how scents immediately bring up some of our most familiar and meaningful memories. The stories of his wanders around the world, and his encounters with the producers of the raw materials create both fascinating and intoxicating reading. Highly recommend.

 

The Language of Clothes by Alison Lurie – a 1981 take on fashion

I came across this 1981 book in a bibliography listing in another book about fashion. I was familiar with the writer's fiction, and thought it would be interesting to get her take, so I requested it through an inter-library loan.

I'm sorry to report that the material feels quite dated, and that the book was not written very objectively. Lurie is very judgmental and her style is preachy: in a chapter labeled "Male and Female" she wrote that "toreador" and "Capri" pants (her quotes) came "in odd, glaring colors and ended a tight, awkward six inches above the ankle as if they had shrunk in the wash." She also wrote that "Although women in male clothes usually look like gentlemen, men who wear women's clothes, unless they are genuine transsexuals, seem to imitate the most vulgar and unattractive form of female dress, as if in a spirit of deliberate and hostile parody."

It seems as though we've come a long way since 1981...

Remember the Ladies – Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts is a journalist who is known for covering the political scene in Washington, DC. Her voice is familiar to many due to her commentaries on National Public Radio (NPR) and her years working for ABC News. She comes from a leading political family, the Boggs. Both her parents served as US Representatives from Louisiana, and her ancestry includes a number of prominent lawmakers reaching all the way back to the period of the Louisiana Purchase.

She has written a number of books with a political and/or historical focus, but this is the first for me. I found it to be an enlightening, lively account of some of the leading ladies of the Revolutionary Period, with special attention paid to Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. There has been so little attention paid to the women of the time, who generally stayed behind the scenes due to the conventions of society, that it is not easy to find a non-fictionalized account of their lives that is truly readable. 

I enjoyed the audio book as read by the author, but I would have liked to have heard even more about the remarkable women who were the subject of her book. I will be researching and adding some biographies of them to my reading list soon.