TABASCO(R) An Illustrated History is the first and only book about the McIlhenny family and company based on previously untapped documents in the McIlhenny Company Archives. This chronicle examines the origin of TABASCO(R) sauce, from its post-Civil War creation on Avery Island, Louisiana, to its evolution into the -gold standard- of pepper sauces and a global culinary icon.

It also examines the often stranger-than-fiction stories that are inexorably bound up with the rise of TABASCO(R)--Edmund McIlhenny's creation of the sauce in the midst of Reconstruction-era economic ruin;...