A review by margaretpinard
The Arcanum: The Extraordinary True Story by Janet Gleeson

3.0

Interesting treatment of the intrigues over porcelain technology. I picked this up because I loved a fiction work of Gleeson's, but found this nonfiction book to be a little less captivating, mostly because she repeated things that were still true, when it wasn't necessary. It felt like stretching out the narrative. "The king was impatient again" or "Bottger was still getting drunk all the time to drown away his sorrows" or "the spies were swarming around Meissen factory, still" etc. But if you cut those out, a great recounting of the humorous-now, deadly-then court intrigues and their effects on history.