Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul (Rowan Jacobsen) *Signed*

Bookplate signed by Rowan Jacobsen mounted inside! From James Beard Award-winning author Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar.When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. A childhood of waxy mass-market chocolate had left him indifferent to the sweet, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen explores the abandonment of wild and heirloom cacao in the 19th and 20th centuries in favor of the high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by “Big Chocolate”-the handful of giant corporations that control the industry and have historically paid its five million developing-world farmers less than a dollar per day.In Wild Chocolate, Jacobsen journeys deep