A History of the World in 6 Glasses Review
This book should really be called "A History of the Western World in 6 Glasses," as information technology doesn't consider the drinks of S America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia. Indeed, tea is considered but through the lens of the British empire, even though the formal Japanese tea service is arguably more than interesting than a British tea party. Even as a Western history, information technology kind of fails, equally there's a large gap between wine production in the Roman empire and the distillation of rum in Barbados. This can only be viewed as a surface history of the world, only as far as surface stories go, it's pretty interesting. Throughout the book, Standage tells the history of six beverages (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) equally they appeared in the historical tape. This is really non then slap-up, as the book ends up talking about beer without e'er mentioning Deutschland, and vino without ever mentioning France or California. Instead of bringing information technology all back together in the epilogue, he just rambles on virtually bottled water and (randomly) colonizing Mars. The book as well contains a shockingly uncritical delineation of the Coca-Cola company, which creatives a "drink" that tin can best exist described as a noxious substance that no one should exist consuming, especially not on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the health effects of soda are not discussed. I'd recommend A History of the World in vi Glasses but to those interested in culinary history and esoterica. History buffs and full general readers should skip this 1.
A well-written book is sure to quench the thirst of a curious reader, full of facts or action that keeps them coming back for more. Just, how did people throughout history quench their literal thirst and how do the beverage choices made throughout history help define the advancements the earth has seen since its inception? Tom Standage seeks to answer these and many other questions as he examines how six beverages (beer, vino, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) help to explicate global advancements since humans first inhabited the earth. Standage takes readers every bit far back equally possible to explore how beer could have influenced history so completely. A combination of water and cereal grains, beer was an accidental discovery that exemplifies the sedentary nature of humans. Crops took time to grow and required people to stay in one place for a catamenia of time. The fermentation process also took a period to develop, which required people not to roam freely across the land. Beer could be fabricated and consumed by anyone, which differed profoundly from wine. More of a high-class drink, vino was much more than complex to make and costly to consume. As Standage explains, it was developed by the Romans and Athenians, who modified information technology and created lavish drinking parties effectually its consumption. Standage besides argues that wine helped propel Christianity around the globe, as the beverage is at the center of the religion's cardinal symbolic theme of the Claret of Christ. Moving from simple fermentation to a more than circuitous system called distillation, spirits came onto the scene and served to propel the world ahead even more. With use of scientific brewing and the add-on of carbohydrate to help the naturally impeded yeasts found in fruits or grains, spirits were a more complex and fiery potable. The demand for sugars helped to foster its cultivation, which was back-breaking work. What better way to accept sugar harvested than through the use of slaves, which Standage explains helped bring spirits to the New Globe. Caribbean saccharide pikestaff was cultivated by African slaves, creating a tumultuous fourth dimension in history to facilitate the creation of many new and interesting beverages. An equally popular drink in the form of coffee emerged, which created an enlightenment of sorts. Coffee became the potable of academics and the intellectual, as they would assemble to discuss their ideas at coffee houses well in the night. The fostering of discussions, much equally wine had washed for the Romans and Athenians, came from coffee and, to this twenty-four hours, the correlation between the beverage and higher understanding is accepted. Tea, on the other hand, proved not merely to be a drink that brought most medicinal properties, but helped U.k. cement its ability in the world. While the British Empire gained in importance, the British East India Company developed a worldwide supply of tea and marketed it as best as possible. This ability remained strong for centuries, as the British remained at its middle. Notwithstanding, all skillful things must exist replaced with something else, leaving Coca-Cola to move from a pharmaceutical remedy to the beverage of America in the tardily 19th and early 20th centuries. Its product skyrocketed and was soon symbolic of America, which developed into liberty earlier long. American troops all over the world sought the beverage and wherever the Us military found itself, freedom was said to be too. Standage talks at length about the Soviet push button-back against Coca-Cola, though the Fe Pall was no match for the power of the mighty soda pop. In a volume that leaves the reader's head spinning equally they reach for their drinkable of choice, one tin can simply wonder what the next large drink volition be, and how its affect will shape the future. Standage posits his guess in the epilogue, but you lot'll accept to read to find out. Recommended to those who love history told through a unique lens, as well equally the reader who loves to larn equally they are entertained. I quite relish looking at history and globe events through unorthodox ways, particularly when I had not thought to do and so myself. Tom Standage does a masterful job at creating this perspective and fills this book with a keen deal of information that can be interpreted in many ways. While I simply skimmed the surface of his discussions in the paragraph in a higher place, the fact that six mere beverages tin truly tell so much well-nigh how humans accept evolved over time is amazing. Standage uses concrete examples to substantiate his arguments and keeps the discussion interesting at all turns. He has lilliputian business nigh offending, as he speaks openly and frankly at every turn. His attending to detail is like few other books I accept read in the past and the fact that topics flow then easily makes the book even more than interesting. With twelve strong chapters (2 on each beverage), Standage explores the history of the beverage and then discusses its social, political, and economic touch on the earth. This permits the reader to meliorate understand his arguments and near demands taking a step back to run across how the pieces all come up together. I am pleasantly surprised almost how ensconced I was with the arguments presented and can but hope that his other works on the subject of world history are just equally captivating. Now and so, I need a Guinness to synthesise some of what I read... or maybe a dark roast coffee.... no, a strong tea! Well, while I decide, become find this volume and see what you think for yourself. Kudos, Mr. Standage, for an amazing read. I can just promise other adventurous readers take the time and enjoy this as much as I have. Love/hate the review? An ever-growing drove of others appears at: A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Volume Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/bear witness/...
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
I seem to be in a phase where I like books that bear witness me the hidden life of the everyday things all around us, especially food and beverage. A few years agone I read "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures equally Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany", past Bill Buford, which started me on this quest, which was followed by several more books, including "The Omnivore'due south Dilemma", by Michael Pollan. Nearly recently I read "The Search for God and Guinness", by Stephen Mansfield. At present, I've finished "A History of the World in half-dozen Glasses", past Tom Standage, which connects the span of homo history to 6 different beverages that affected history culturally, politically, anthropologically, nutritionally, and economically. The six, in crude society of their era of greatest influence, are beer, wine, whiskey, java, tea, and cola. More broadly, you lot could take called the book "A History of the World in Two Brain-Altering Chemicals: Alcohol and Caffeine." Information technology is a fascinating look at how these drinks sometimes take been responsible for pivotal moments in history, causing ane civilization to ascension and another to fall. While human affairs are much more complicated than one factor can explicate, we can't deny that i of the reasons ancient tribes turned from peripatetic hunting-gathering to more stationary agriculture was the demand to cultivate grains for beer, for instance. (Standage points out that of course the grains were also used for bread as well, only staff of life and beer were most interchangeable in most places, two phases of cooking of the aforementioned product. Beer was "liquid breadstuff" and bread was "solid beer.") Most the drinks had origins--or at least early chief uses--in religious rituals, especially beer, wine, coffee, and tea. Whiskey and cola, which were much more modern inventions were just consumer products. Eventually, all of them made the bound to common use. What fabricated them meaning was their eventual ubiquity, fifty-fifty if at first they were reserved to the elites. There were besides some very interesting anecdotes, such as the story of how java came to Europe from the Heart East. Some theologians rejected it as a Muslim invention, thus of the devil, while others embraced. And so a decision had to be made. Other sources claim he said: "This devil'due south drink is so succulent...nosotros should crook the devil by baptizing it." True or non, I volition exist certain to thank Pope Clement VIII and pray for him every day over my morning loving cup of joe. Another interesting tidbit concerned the importance of tea to the Industrial Revolution in United kingdom in the 18th and 19th century. Every bit labor became less about individual craftsmen and more about unskilled workers who could maintain machines in monotonous repitition over long hours, tea and tea breaks helped them to remain alert and concentrate. Likewise, even as the manufactory workers were gathering together in closer working and living conditions, waterborne illnesses became almost extinct, non simply due to the boiling of h2o for tea, but for the phenolic acids--the tannins--in the tea itself. In fact, every i of the six drinks was considered for both their positive and negative effects on gild. Coffee led to 16th-century coffeehouses that were the locus of the Scientific Revolution that led to the Enlightenment, democracy, complimentary-market place economic science, and more than. The Chinese stranglehold on tea production and insistence on Westerners buying information technology with silvery, not trading it for Western appurtenances, led to the creation of the opium trade from India that eventually destabilized Cathay in the 19th century, which terminal through the 20th century until the ascent of Communism. While these 6 beverages can't be said to take caused the most important and decisive moments of history, they oft played significant roles in moments that acquired the course of history to become in one direction and not the other. If non for the wine information technology exported, would Greece have risen to a slap-up culture that brought us philosophy and then much else?Without tea or rum/whiskey, would United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland have become the empire on whose flag the sun never sets? Maybe, perchance in a different course or in a different time, just undoubtedly different. "A History of the Earth in Half dozen Glasses" was a fun and quick read that makes me desire to delve more than into the various individual elements it presents. Which is the best kind of volume, isn't information technology?Shortly earlier his death in 1605, Pope Cloudless 8 was asked to state the Cosmic church's position on java. At the fourth dimension, the drink was a novelty little known in Europe except among botanists and medical men, including those at the University of Padua, a leading heart for medical research. Java's religious opponents argued that coffee was evil: They contended that since Muslims were unable to drinkable wine, the holy potable of Christians, the devil had punished them with coffee instead. Only the pope had the terminal say. A Venetian merchant provided a small sample for inspection, and Clement decided to gustatory modality the new beverage before making his decision. The story goes that he was so enchanted by its taste and olfactory property that he approved its consumption past Christians.
Infants benefited too, since the antibacterial phenolics in tea pass easily into the chest milk of nursing mothers. This lowered babe bloodshed and provided a big labor pool just as the Industrial Revolution took hold.
An interesting and engaging mode to learn almost history. I constitute it fascinating. Volition look on these beverages through new lenses now.
Read
Edited February 25, 2022 من خلاصه کتاب رو از پادکست بیپلاس گوش دادم. طبیعتا نمیشه از روی خلاصه ۴۰ دقیقهای در مورد کل کتاب نسخه پیچید. کتاب تاریخ پیدایش ۶ نوشیدنی و ارتباطشون با اتفاقات تاریخی جهان رو توضیح میده.
خلاصه کتاب با وجود نکات جالبی که داشت ولی نتونست من رو برای خوندن کل کتاب ترغیب کنه.
I noticed this book on a few friend'southward 'to-read' lists and thought I should write a review on it since I accept read information technology a few years back and information technology is still very much part of our family unit's proud ...intellectual history...8-) We do not realize how necessary fluids are for our survival. As Tom Standage states, we can alive without food for quite a while, but will die very soon of fluid deprivation. In fact, aren't we looking for water on Mars before nosotros drift at that place? :-)) Initially I did not programme to buy this book. I was trying to find "The Devil's Cup: A History of the World Co-ordinate to Coffee" by Stewart Lee Allen. Tom Standage divided the history of the globe into six periods, each forming a unlike chapter in the book: Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt; Wine in Greece and Rome; Spirits in the Colonial Period; Coffee in the Historic period of Reason; Tea and the British empire; Coca-Cola and the Ascent of America. Three are alcohol beverages and 3 caffeine. The thought for the book came to Tom Standage 'while reading an article in my Lord's day newspaper most a wine said to have been one of Napoleon's favourites during exile: Vin de Constance. It is a sweetness wine, made in the Constantia region of Due south Africa, which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Jane Austen'southward Sense and Sensibility, the heroine is advised to potable information technology because of it'southward 'healing powers on a disappointed heart'. Charles Dickens also mentions the wine, referring in The Mystery of Edwin Drood to 'the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit'." At that place is perchance a more subtle, unintentional, humor buried in the amazing facts, and the reader needs to concentrate. It can cramp the reader'southward style a chip on the think-tank. And then much then that I personally often fell comatose and had to reread everything in a new session, which made it tedious in some instances. Only the facts are worth learning! It certainly sheds a bright new light on earth history. The volume is so laden with data that I found information technology too much to absorb in ane sitting. For instance: the ancient sometime tea culture of the Chinese which was just discovered hundreds of years afterwards by the Brits, changed the latter's foreign policy forever; brandy and rum, developed from the Arabian noesis of chemistry , inspired the age of Exploration; Greeks spread their influence through their exports of wine all over the world. The book encourage thought. Slavery, wars and sanctions were frequently fueled by some of these beverages. Reading information technology all in ane book, from Tom Standage'due south perspective, turns these facts into eye-openers. For instance: P 80: While modern wine drinkers may turn op their noses at the Greek and Roman apply of additives, it is non that different from the modern use of oak every bit flavoring agent, often to make otherwise unremarkable wines more than palatable. Below these adulterated wines was posca, a drinkable fabricated by mixing h2o with vino that had turned sour and vinegarlike. Posca was commonly issued to Roman soldiers when improve wines were unavailable, for example,during long campaigns. Information technology was, in upshot, a class of portable water-purification engineering science for the Roman regular army. When a Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge dipped in vino during his crucifixion, the wine in question would have been posca." I initially gave it three stars only because it was non an easy read. I actually needed to keep all my ducks in a row for this one. But in retrospect I changed my mind. His research was excellent! Information technology is a skilful read for someone who wants to know how the development of chemistry from aboriginal times until at present changed our world - in an easy, non-scientific, but factual read. Information technology is the only book I offer to invitee to take to bed with them!"...herbs, dear and other additives were commonly added to lesser wines to conceal imperfections. Some Romans even carried herbs and other flavorings with them while traveling, to improve the taste of bad wine.
The location where you read the volume does not matter. What is more important is that the information shared in the book ensures long relaxing word on a Sunday afternoon with friends and family. It gives some mundane moments the more meaningful memories it needs.
23 Feb 2015 - I read this book since my son recommended it to me, while he was reading it for his World History AP class this year. I run across why he liked information technology and I more often than not did too. It is fun and breezy and covers some fascinating ground that is indeed important, and grossly undercovered in nigh books or courses in history. However, the book is a chip presumptuous in stating it is a "History of the Earth…" or that the six drinks have "defined humankind'south past." Neither argument is totally true, except in a very loose style, but that should not terminate i from reading information technology. While refreshingly more open up to an objective view of history regarding capitalism, free markets and belongings rights, than many (nearly?) history books, the writer still promoted some completely foolish ideas by giving them equal or more time vs. audio ideas and facts. The writer needs to explore the idea that all these beverages are/were, in issue, private, not "public" or government created or endemic. His epilogue could have been far more informed and informative on the subject area of the modern situation of water problems. If he had explored the crucial nature of privatization in human being'due south need for a quality beverage that does non toxicant him/her, is of reasonable expense and is available to but not wasted by virtually everyone. The definition of imperialism is likewise not ane of the strong suits of the author. His never defining it conspicuously just none-the-less using its corrupted meaning past communist ideology was very unhelpful. He only tacitly used a definition that has twisted the word with pretzel logic to include non-coercive private firms' actions (simply Not include Soviet or other communist foreign assailment). That is worse than but sorry. He is non equally bad as many on this score, since he also made fun of the various communist groups' ridiculous attacks on Coca-Cola, much to the detriment of their comrade citizens in the various countries he names. But withal, being muddled on this important concept has pregnant repercussions. There are other words, incidents, trends, etc. that the author could help the reader past not using, or at least defining carefully ('consumerism,' for one), but I simply land over again, the book has lots to recommend it and I enjoyed and learned a bunch from it overall. It is well written, fun and funny and I recommend it overall.
This book, I've read twice. It takes you from the germination of beer and society in Mesopotamia, to the employ of vino equally currency and how wine types represented a social classification system in Greece and Rome. It went through spirits and colonial fourth dimension: We only have whiskey because information technology took too long to ship scotch and brandy by carriage out w, and so nosotros made corn whiskey. To how java was at offset banned in Muslim society and chosen black wine - till they figured that it caused a different state of heed than actual alcohol. To the employ of tea as a way to stay hydrated in England, the city was packed full and the water was non the cleanest. Once java arrived in England, in that location were coffee houses for men just because they were a place to smoke and talk politics while drinking coffee. Women in England had tea gardens, nice gardens where they could walk, talk or sit down and drink tea. The book wrapped up in the time of only later on WWII, granting Coca-Cola responsible as the first visitor to be globalized. The factories were built in American forts during the state of war and so that the soldier could have coca-cola to drink, when WWII was over the factories remained. And then information technology dipped a scrap to the Cold War equally Coke played around with Invisible Coke and than landed at being Coca-Cola Classic, the original recipe minus the cocaine.
Read
Edited August 13, 2019 تاریخ جهان در 6 لیوان خیلی جالبه اگه توجه کنیم به برخی مسائل جزیی اطرافمون که چه تاثیری در زندگی و تاریخ یه ملت میتونه داشته باشه و جرقه شروع یا پایان چه کارهایی میتونه باشه.
نوشته:تام استندیج
انتشار در 2005
کتاب به فارسی ترجمه نشده و من پادکست خلاصه 40 دقیقه ای رو گوش دادم.
این نوع کتاب ها که تاریخ رو با مسائل جزیی و پیش پا افتاده بیان میکنن،میتونه خیلی جذاب و ماندگار توی ذهن باشه.
کتاب از 6 نوشیدنی به ترتیب:
آب جو
شراب
نوشیدنی الکلی(الکل سنگین)
قهوه
چای
سودا
صحبت میکنه،که هرکدوم در چه دوره ای بیشترین تاثیر خودشون رو به طور مستقیم یا غیر مستقیم گذاشتن.در خلال این حرف ها نکات و حوادث مهم و تاثیرگذار اون دوره رو بیان میکنه.
کتاب جالبی بود. یکی دیگه از پیشنهادهای پادکست بی پلاس. اینکه مثلا بدونی چای چه تاثیر مهمی در استقلال آمریکایی داشته که الان در تمام دنیا تاثبرگذاره تامل برانگیزه.
ولی مشکلش به نظرم این بود که شاید اگه اینطوری به هر چیز کوچیکی نگاه کنیم به یه همچین نتایجی برسیم.
بعضی جاها نویسنده سعی کرده بود برای بهتر جلوه دادن منظورش و مهمتر جلوه دادن نقش مواردی که بررسی کرده بود، یه سری بزرگنمایی بی مورد داشته باشه.
iii/5
Displaying 1 - 10 of ii,529 reviews
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3872.A_History_of_the_World_in_6_Glasses
0 Response to "A History of the World in 6 Glasses Review"
Post a Comment