Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011: E.V.O.O. just got a whole lot more complicated. Tom Mueller's
Extra Virginity is about as explosive as an expose can get, at least if your subject is liquid fat. The road from tree to table, it turns out, is fraught with corruption, fraud, and laboratory interventions. Mueller shows how and why the trade in adulterated olive oil is about as profitable as the trade in some hard drugs, and with a lot less risk, too. There are equally entertaining detours into olive oil's long history, the politics of regulation and enforcement, and even debates over the best way to taste it (swirl, aerate, spit, or just swig?). All in all, it's a great read not just for foodies, but also for anyone interested in the complexities of global trade and organized crime. --Darryl Campbell
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“Mueller reveals the brazen fraud in the olive oil industry and teaches readers how to sniff out the good stuff.” (
Dwight Garner - New York Times)
“Mueller builds a convincing case for olive oil as one of the most miraculous and versatile substances in all of nature. . . . Passionately written yet clear-headed.” (
USA Today)
“Tom Mueller is, in turn, chemist, explorer, scholar and bard, infusing the narrative with a sense of wonder.” (
Times Literary Supplement)
“Extra Virginity may make you reconsider the extra you’re paying for ‘extra.’” (
Wall Street Journal)
“The New Yorker writer does for his subject what Susan Orlean did for orchids.” (
Columbus Dispatch)
“... [Extra-Virginity] does for olive oil what Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation did for hamburgers. Mueller traces the history of this valuable product from antiquity to the present, but the really disturbing part is his expose of the inferior quality control and outright fraud among today’s’ oil producers.” (
Hollywood Reporter)
“Starred review. Engrossing history, vivid contemporary reporting and a cogent call to action, expertly blended in an illuminating text.” (
Kirkus Reviews)
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