"Garlic is more than the strongest of herbs. It is, in no mere metaphorical sense, pure magic." - Anthony Burgess Growing up in the 1940s, I knew my mother declined to reveal the makings of her salad dressing to admiring guests because its base was olive oil, which almost everyone we knew in northern New Jersey considered "disgusting." Garlic was even worse, and my interest in it would surely have come much later in my life if I hadn't settled in Europe after my college years and naval service. The move had been all but fated by reading novels set there and chafing all the more under the restrictions of American Puritanism. Clichéd as it sounds, decades of adventure followed, interspersed with writing, as much because I didn't know what else to do—certainly not spend my days in a disciplined office. While the goal is still to write a decent sentence in English, it's now diluted by visions of a delicious supper. George Feifer, author of Great Garlic! Great Garlic! tells some of the history, lore, benefits and ravages of the greatest plant on earth in the sense of being the one about which more myths have been told and wars fought than any other. Many people believe it's also the greatest for what its contribution to food, but it's part of the story that many other remain convinced the thing is poison. Take your pick, but you should know the underdog's rise in the United States from despised signal of inferior birth to pride of place in even WASP kitchens although far from them all—reveals a great deal about who we were and are as a people.