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Mahle invented Chiclets, the square candy-coated gum. After selling his patent to the Adams Company, he was a consultant in the gum industry into his 80s, working with companies all over the world. He died February 13 at 101. From This is True for 22 February 1998 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Barbara Gregorich Amazon Price: $3.95 Editorial Review: Start to Read! Books are the most entertaining, satisfying, and educational beginning readers you will find anywhere. The three reading levels in the series make it easy for your child to learn to read at a relaxed and enjoyable pace. Each book your child reads helps build confidence and a sense of pride.  By: Paul Haven List Price: $6.50 Amazon Price: $6.50 Editorial Review: Danny Gurkin believes in his heart that the Sluggers are the best team in baseball. There's just the small matter of breaking a century-old curse involving a pretzel, a bubble-gum tycoon, and a missing shortstop. Danny also believes that the outcome of Sluggers' games depends on him and hot dogs. Because eating two hot dogs with everything before each game is the best kind of luck a fan can give his team. Danny Ghurkin has a date with baseball destiny; he just doesn't know it. Yet.  By: Michae Redclift List Price: $27.00 Amazon Price: $27.00 Editorial Review: Not long after the Civil War, three-time Mexican president and Alamo victor General Santa Ana introduced chicle--a rare ingredient from Mexico that was the basis for what would become chewing gum--to a Staten Island inventor. Both were down on their luck, and little did they know that their chance meeting would help create an icon of the modern age. A functionally useless product that simply makes us happy, gum popped onto the American scene with a bang, quickly becoming an icon for baseball, movie stars, adolescent rebellion, and "attitude." A barometer of modernity, it was one of the first products to be advertised on billboards--a scheme hatched by the Wrigley brothers of Chicago. But there was another side to the story as well. For not only was gum a mass culture archetype, it helped fuel a long indigenous revolution in the jungles of the Yucatan. And ironically enough, it was gum manufacturers like Wrigley who ultimately funded the Mayan Indians who collected the chicle as they fought for autonomy from the Mexican government. In Chewing Gum, Michael Redclift deftly chronicles the growing popularity of gum in the U.S. alongside a fascinating history of peasant revolution led by charismatic Indians in the jungles of southern Mexico. Until the 1950s, the production of gum relied on the chicle harvested by Mayans. For seventy-five years, demand had steadily grown across the world. After World War II, however, synthetic gum replaced chicle, putting many of the "chicleros" out of work and ending a colorful epoch. Today, due to the current rage for "natural" products, chicle has made a comeback in a new role as natural chewing gum. Vivid and absorbing, Chewing Gum is at once an American cultural history and an emblematic cautionary tale about the how the resources that fuel modern pleasures often come from scenes of violence, chaos, and oppression.  By: Joe Hayes List Price: $7.95 Amazon Price: $7.95 Editorial Review: Kids always want Joe Hayes to tell The Gum-Chewing Rattler. And why not? It combines so many things kids love to do-chew bubble gum, tell tall tales, and drive their moms crazy-with the wild, impossible claim that a rattlesnake chewed gum and blew a bubble with it! You see, when Joe was a boy, that's what he told his mother-that bubble gum saved him from a rattlesnake's fangs! Really! Don't worry-Joe's mother didn't believe him either. In 2005, Joe Hayes received the Talking Leaves Award from the National Storytelling Network for his contributions to the literature of storytelling.  By: Mario ValentiniCheryl Hardacre List Price: $26.00 Amazon Price: $18.98 |
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