In this new book, Seth Garfield demonstrates his vast knowledge of Brazil, moving gracefully through the different political, environmental, and economic contexts that shaped the history of the guarana plant (Paullinia cupana) from the colonial period to recent times. In an engaging way, Garfield shows how guarana, the main ingredient in a popular Brazilian soft drink, became much more than a fruit with stimulating properties. It is also a vibrant ingredient in the country's complex historical relationship between people and the natural environment.Garfield's book highlights the interests of traders, techniques of scientists, stratagems of marketers, and the behaviors and tastes of consumers who popularized new forms and uses of the stimulant. The author, using a broad methodological framework, introduces the production of knowledge on, and the circulation of the fruit in, distinct historical periods and situations. To build his argument, Garfield examines an amalgam of primary sources, Indigenous myths, photos, maps, advertisements, legislation, newspapers, academic journals, and many other sources. The vast bibliography that he consults enables our understanding of how knowledge, goods, and power have materialized and circulated through the fruit and its uses.