A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage

From British tea-time dominance, beverage history goes to that fizzy badge of American hegemony, Coca-Cola. Tea, which tradition holds was first brewed some 4,500 years ago (our author dates it closer to the first century), became largely controlled, along with opium, by the East India Company. In 17th-century Europe, coffeehouses were not only as ubiquitous as Starbucks, they were “information exchanges” where people traded news as “vibrant and unreliable” as that found on a contemporary Internet blog. Islam eschewed booze, but a sober gift from the Arab world was coffee. The attempt to pay for the recent revolution by imposing federal taxes on independent stills produced the short-lived Whiskey Rebellion in the new United States. Allotments of rum, in turn, enhanced the fighting effectiveness of British tars against foreign sailors debilitated by scurvy. In Córdoba, distilled spirits formed rum. Here, we learn the vintage that Caligula preferred.

From cuneiform beer ledgers, Standage’s story hops to Dionysus and the oenophiles of Greece and Rome, who knew as much about the pleasures of the grape as any modern wine snob. (And so the stage was set for cartoons set in barrooms eons later). Finding it good, and more salubrious than plain water, mankind turned brewer. Technology historian Standage ( The Turk, 2002, etc.) follows the flow of civilization as humanity guzzles a half-dozen prime beverages.įirst made by nature in prehistory was beer.

A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage