“A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage

In the beginning, there was only water. Then man discovered beer.

This is how Tom Standage introduces his topic, tracing the history of the world through the lens of the beverages men drank.

Beer is the beverage of man’s early history. Standage notes how beer almost certainly was discovered rather than invented in the earliest civilization. In Standage’s thinking, beer was a sort of liquid bread–with the added nutritional advantages of Vitamin B12 (from the yeast used to ferment it) and a low level of harmful microorganisms (due to the alcohol content.) Standage traces beer through the ancient Middle East and its majestic empires: Sumer and Egypt.

Wine takes over as the world beverage when Greece rises as a world power. Greece introduced wine to the rest of the world, along with certain patterns of drinking wine. Rome solidified wine’s standing and created the wine snob.

Wine would rule the world for over a millenia–until the tee-totaling Arabs distilled it into spirits. While the Arabian world mostly regarded the spirits as an alchemical ingredient or as a medicine, once imported to Europe, spirits took off as a beverage. Distilled spirits, from a variety of sources, would be the drink of the age of exploration, fueling fleets that colonized far-flung continents. Spirits would also serve a distinct role in the expansion of slavery throughout the world.

The Age of Enlightenment replaced the inebriating spirits with the consciousness-enhancing coffee. Coffee shops became hotbeds for new political, social, philosophical, and scientific thought. Quick on coffee’s heels, tea advanced throughout the world as the British Empire reached its high point in the nineteenth century.

In the twentieth century, a new world power–and a new beverage–would come to dominate the world. America ended its mostly isolationist stance by entering the World Wars–and Coca Cola invaded the globe.

Standage’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses represents one of my favorite sorts of histories–a history that explores how people lived, and which ties social history in with the megolithic historical events like wars. Standage artfully weaves together the daily lives of people and the machinations of nations–all on the threads of six different global beverages.

I don’t know that this is a book that will appeal to everyone–but for those who like this sort of book, this is definitely worth reading. I was impressed with how Standage related information in an interesting yet fair way (for instance, he addresses the use of wine in Christian communion quite nicely). He does a good job of pulling in a variety of disciplines as he writes, talking about the making of each beverage, the various benefits of each (like the aforementioned Vitamin B12 in early beer), the ways in which the beverage was consumed, and the giant world events that led to or resulted from the preparation and trade of the various beverages. I definitely recommend this book (to those who like this sort of thing :-P).

Rating:4 Stars
Category:History
Synopsis:Standage tells the history of the world–through the lens of six beverages that dominated the world stage during different ages.
Recommendation: If you like this sort of book, you’ll like this book. It is an excellent representation of a topical history.