A History of the World in 6 Glasses
New York Times Bestseller. 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. 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.
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Community Reviews
Very informative and interesting. I may have skipped around a bit on the soda sections, it being one of my least favorite drinks, but I ultimately found this book to be both entertaining and enlightening. I particularly enjoyed the sections on beer and spirits, as I had little conception of the history of those drinks. I now like trotting out my little facts about early American history and the use of spirits to influence voting habits in rural country life, used frequently by our most beloved of presidents, George Washington. A fun read that will then liven up any get-togethers you have.
This is a fun book appropriate to its authors background writing for the Economist. The prose snaps and the generalizations sizzle. The book is at its best when it zeroes in on a moment in time and helps us understand what it’s chosen beverage meant to that people and what that tells us about how the society worked. Some examples:
1. Why did the Persians consume beer from a common receptacle while the Greeks watered down their wine?
Persians generally consumed beer from the vessel it was brewed in, which was large and thus folks sat around and shared it. Whereas Greeks viewed wine as an aid to discourse and watered it down enough to permit discourse to continue.
2. Why did the Greeks share wine communally and the Romans assign each person in a party a wine respective to their station?
Romans prided themselves on rigid social stratification and order whereas Greeks preferred the feeling of an open democratic forum.
3. Why did people all start drinking coffee? Where did they drink it? What happened when they did?
This coincides with the shift to knowledge work, whereas laborers often still hit the ale house, coffee was consumed in coffee houses which became effectively learning and commerce societies. The London stock exchange basically started in a coffee house, so did the ideas that led to the French Revolution.
4. Why on earth did anyone ever think it was a good idea to drink rum?
It was something that could be made from a byproduct of sugar in the new world, letting people get drunk cheaply without relying on trade from Europe.
5. How did England, a country with no direct access to tea, become its largest consumer in less than a century?
It’s remarkably complicated, but it starts with the East India company forming a global monopoly on the export of tea and ends with the opium wars?
6. What was going on that led someone to make Coca Cola? And why did it take over the world, anyhow?
Apparently lots of folks were making quack medicine around the same time and selling it to cure everything from headaches to hysteria. Coke showed up right around when Atlanta tried out prohibition and - hey gotta drink something. Then when World War Two happened, the head of Coke basically decided he’d ship coke anywhere servicemen were, even at a loss. As a result people developed a taste for coke everywhere and the drink became synonymous with liberty and democracy (to the extent the soviets apparently preferred Pepsi!)
The author not only convincingly answers these questions with detailed research, but reveals aspects of the societies in which he drops us into by telling us how they used these drinks, what their social significance was, and what else was going on that related do them.
The book has been criticized as casting its protagonist beverages as larger historical movers than justified. Did coffee topple the French monarchy? Tea the Chinese? Was beer the impetus for writing? Probably not, but I think the author intends to be provocative and interesting and mixed with an oversized portion of anecdotes and interesting facts that’s just fine.
If the purpose of scholarly history is to discover and interpret historical reality that pushes the bounds of modern scholarship, to situate assertions and speculations into well worn academic debates, to challenge the best understanding of the past with new research well this book doesn’t do that.
But if the purpose of popular history is not to do scholarly research but rather help present day readers understand societies and times other than their own and perhaps ask new questions about themselves, then I think this book does it well!
Best read with at least one of the titular drinks in hand, ideally one of the first two!
Four stars.
1. Why did the Persians consume beer from a common receptacle while the Greeks watered down their wine?
Persians generally consumed beer from the vessel it was brewed in, which was large and thus folks sat around and shared it. Whereas Greeks viewed wine as an aid to discourse and watered it down enough to permit discourse to continue.
2. Why did the Greeks share wine communally and the Romans assign each person in a party a wine respective to their station?
Romans prided themselves on rigid social stratification and order whereas Greeks preferred the feeling of an open democratic forum.
3. Why did people all start drinking coffee? Where did they drink it? What happened when they did?
This coincides with the shift to knowledge work, whereas laborers often still hit the ale house, coffee was consumed in coffee houses which became effectively learning and commerce societies. The London stock exchange basically started in a coffee house, so did the ideas that led to the French Revolution.
4. Why on earth did anyone ever think it was a good idea to drink rum?
It was something that could be made from a byproduct of sugar in the new world, letting people get drunk cheaply without relying on trade from Europe.
5. How did England, a country with no direct access to tea, become its largest consumer in less than a century?
It’s remarkably complicated, but it starts with the East India company forming a global monopoly on the export of tea and ends with the opium wars?
6. What was going on that led someone to make Coca Cola? And why did it take over the world, anyhow?
Apparently lots of folks were making quack medicine around the same time and selling it to cure everything from headaches to hysteria. Coke showed up right around when Atlanta tried out prohibition and - hey gotta drink something. Then when World War Two happened, the head of Coke basically decided he’d ship coke anywhere servicemen were, even at a loss. As a result people developed a taste for coke everywhere and the drink became synonymous with liberty and democracy (to the extent the soviets apparently preferred Pepsi!)
The author not only convincingly answers these questions with detailed research, but reveals aspects of the societies in which he drops us into by telling us how they used these drinks, what their social significance was, and what else was going on that related do them.
The book has been criticized as casting its protagonist beverages as larger historical movers than justified. Did coffee topple the French monarchy? Tea the Chinese? Was beer the impetus for writing? Probably not, but I think the author intends to be provocative and interesting and mixed with an oversized portion of anecdotes and interesting facts that’s just fine.
If the purpose of scholarly history is to discover and interpret historical reality that pushes the bounds of modern scholarship, to situate assertions and speculations into well worn academic debates, to challenge the best understanding of the past with new research well this book doesn’t do that.
But if the purpose of popular history is not to do scholarly research but rather help present day readers understand societies and times other than their own and perhaps ask new questions about themselves, then I think this book does it well!
Best read with at least one of the titular drinks in hand, ideally one of the first two!
Four stars.
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