A History of the World in 6 Glasses Author: Tom Standage | Language: English | ISBN:
B002STNBRK | Format: EPUB
A History of the World in 6 Glasses Description
From beer to Coca-Cola, the six drinks that have helped shape human history.Throughout human history. certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.
For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again.
- File Size: 1156 KB
- Print Length: 311 pages
- Publisher: Walker Books; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002STNBRK
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
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- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,997 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages - #24
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference > History
- #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages - #24
in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference > History
Breathing is essential, but the air is free and no one has found a way to make it special enough that people will pay for the privilege, unless you count the hits of pure oxygen that some favor. Eating is essential, and of course there are countless ways that the activity has been turned into a trade. Between them, as far as the body's needs go, is drinking, that is, drinking water, and while there is a pretty good trade in more-or-less pure water, it's the stuff that is added to water that has changed history. Or, at least, that is the view of Tom Standage in the sprightly _A History of the World in 6 Glasses_ (Walker & Company). An overview of world history that is based on what people imbibe might seem to be a theme too narrow to tell us much, but this enjoyably breezy overview looks into science and culture through the millennia and shows that humans took a physiologic necessity and used it to shape the ancient, classical, and modern worlds.
Beer, for instance, gave us history itself. The workers who built the pyramids were paid in beer, and Egyptians would greet each other with the phrase "Bread and beer," a genial wish for prosperity. The pictures of Egyptians enjoying their beer show them doing it together, using straws communally inserted into a big jar of beer; using straws kept the floating stuff at the top from being ingested. Wine, by contrast, was the drink of the elite ever since it spread through ancient Greece. It is remarkable that thousands of years later, though the categories have merged somewhat, beer has remained the working man's everyday drink while wine has remained an exotic, fit for connoisseurship and social differentiation. Rum was "The world's first global drink" and a key part of the slave trade as well as of the American drive to independence.
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