So it’s October, and frightfully close to Halloween (may I interest you in our Halloween Spooktacular?), so I figured I’d cover something topical – Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure by Samira Kawash – because whether you celebrate All Hallow’s Eve or not, you’ll likely find it nigh impossible to avoid the sight of candy as the day nears.

While I suppose it would be difficult to make any discussion of candy dull and boring, Kawash does an especially wonderful job keeping the writing lively and inserting a dose of her personality in every chapter as she takes us along the history of candy in North America. The incredulity with which she introduces a rather sophistic argument from a party advertising candy as an entirely wholesome and nutritious food will crack you up, and her exasperation at finding so little information about candy in what look to be promising tomes of histories about food in America is palpable. That being the case, though, she makes sure to write in their defence where it’s due, as when pointing out that information about nutrition was woefully incomplete then, which lets the reader have a better understanding of the times and perceptions. Kawash’s tongue-in-cheek attitude while discussing the history of candy is fitting, and the ambiguities she talks about as to what even constitutes candy, and how arguments for and against candy have at points not made much sense or – even worse – built on the exact same “evidence”, is delightful.

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