It is funny how we prefer certain aspects of books. Another review here enjoyed the non-alcoholic drinks better than the alcoholic drinks due to the amount of history and economics it covered, but I found the alcohol drinks to be far more interesting, in depth, and entertaining. Overall, I liked this book and learned a lot about how these drinks affected trade and became popular worldwide.

I saw this in my sister's to-read list and, boy, am I glad! This was a really fun book to read.
For me.
It was not so fun for my husband, who was stuck sitting next to me and hearing, "Hey, listen to this --" and "Here's something interesting --". But now I'm done, so he can read all the little leftover bits where I managed to hold my tongue and let him enjoy his own book (which probably wasn't half so interesting).

The book attempts to tell the history of the world using six beverages that illustrate the social and political doings of the day: beer (the cultivation of grains), wine (rise of Greek and Roman culture), distilled liquor (sea travel and colonialism), coffee (Age of Reason), tea (British Empire), and Coca-Cola (rise of capitalism, American power and influence). It's a clever way to tell a story.

Although history is told from the typical Euro-centric viewpoint in this book, the beverages and their backstories have impressively global origins: coffee originally from Arabia, tea from Asia, the cocoa and kola from South America and Africa. And some of ingredients' stories, told partly and in passing, would also be very interesting on their own: sugarcane and chocolate, for instance.

Pop non-fiction with clever gimmick of six beverages to summarize world history. Plenty of interesting factoids.

One problem is that the flip side of the cleverness of the gimmick is that all sorts of beverages are left out. The human consumption of animal milk, for example, is an interesting story with important implications but we don't learn about that.

Another problem is that the research does not appear to be very deep and so some of the factoids don't seem to be true. For example, tea is credited with protecting the English from bacterial disease around the time of the industrial revolution. But that is when mortality was the highest overall, and if one looks at specific outbreaks like the great cholera epidemic of John Snow fame, it was specifically the beer drinkers who were spared. It makes some theoretical sense that tea should be helpful but that's different from there being any actual evidence of that.

The book edges beyond cocktail-party chatter to serious stuff at the end in a polemic about water.

I read this book because my husband was so thrilled with it. The author interprets history through the lens of six beverages which drove it: beer, wine, liquor, tea, coffee, and coke. It really was an intriguing idea.
My favorite part was the ancient history of beer. I knew some of it already, but the author presents the information in a fresh, intriguing voice. Good book.

3.5 stars. This book purports to tell the history of six iconic drinks in world history and how they were spread all over the world hand-in-hand with trade and conquest/colonialism, and as an introductory & popular history book, it fulfills its role just fine. I think those reviewers complaining about the lack of depth and stuff like "where's Germany for the beer section?" and "Where's France and California for wine history?" and "large gaps between wine in Rome and rum in Barbados," and even sillier things like "it should be a history of the Western World instead" are completely missing the point on top of coming to this book with unrealistic expectations.

This is no work of academic rigor, the author is no historian, as simple as that. The author's premise seems to be the economics of drinks and how certain drinks became global beverages riding the coattails of superpowers going on trade or conquest all over the world. Beer, wine, coffee, spirits, tea and Coca-Cola all owe their global popularity to the superpowers and empires of each period that either created them or made them a staple of their economy and culture, which is why the focus is on Mesopotamia, Greece/Rome, Britain, the US, etc. To me, it makes sense that he restricted himself to his narrow scope, so there's no point on including France for the wine section merely because it wasn't France that made it a global drink, nor was it Germany who made beer an universal drink, much less was it Japan who spread tea culture across the globe. There's no history of indigenous South American beverages here because people across the globe aren't drinking chicha, and the premise is "six cups," not "every alcoholic drink in existence." Standage hasn't pretended to tell the history of every single drink in every culture in all periods of human history; it's just silly to think it's a flaw of the book that he hasn't. There are books about the missing drinks, and it sounds plain pedantic to object "whataboutism" as a flaw of the book, when it has others worth mentioning.

To me, the flaws come from the writing, which although light, good-humoured and easy to read, is rather simplistic and repetitive. Journalistic more than writerly. Second flaw of note is that the sections are uneven as far as engaging the reader's interest is involved. The section on beer is interesting and it covers the most accepted anthropological theories about the origins of alcoholic drinks (which I guess you'd have to be familiar with to spot, because Standage doesn't state them as plainly but in passing), but the section on wine is rather boring. If you're a Roman history enthusiast, like I am, then it's too simple, almost like written for children, and there's some inaccuracies that remind you Standage is no historian (the part on "posca," for example, is incomplete and not very accurate). The section on spirits gets more interesting and lively, but it feels too summed up because it covers several centuries in just a few paragraphs. The coffee section is mildly interesting, but feels incomplete because it doesn't cover some cultural aspect of the adoption of coffee in Europe, such as the religious ramifications; it's purely economic and mostly a collection of anecdotes. Then the tea section is again an utter bore, and finally the Coca-Cola section is definitely the most interesting of all. You get the point? It's quite unevenly researched.

It's worth your time if you want an easy-peasy introduction to beverages and their key role in the economics of conquest, but don't expect to get a very profound analysis nor a deep historical treatise. This is just fun and will add to your collection of historical trivia.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses having mentioned it several times in conversation haha bit funny when you have had a few. History of the world Beer, wine, spirits liquor, tea, cofee and coke. Very informative and one way of looking at world history. Enjoyed it immensely and worth the time.

This book, I've read twice. It takes you from the formation of beer and society in Mesopotamia, to the use of wine as currency and how wine types represented a social classification system in Greece and Rome. It went through spirits and colonial time: We only have whiskey because it took too long to ship scotch and brandy by wagon out west, so we made corn whiskey. To how coffee was at first banned in Muslim society and called black wine - till they figured that it caused a different state of mind than actual alcohol. To the use of tea as a way to stay hydrated in England, the city was packed full and the water was not the cleanest. Once coffee arrived in England, there were coffee houses for men only 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 and drink tea. The book wrapped up in the time of just after WWII, granting Coca-Cola responsible as the first company to be globalized. The factories were built in American forts during the war so that the soldier could have coca-cola to drink, when WWII was over the factories remained. Then it dipped a bit to the Cold War as Coke played around with Invisible Coke and than landed at being Coca-Cola Classic, the original recipe minus the cocaine.

I noticed this book on a few friend's 'to-read' lists and thought I should write a review on it since I read it a few years back and it is still very much part of our family's proud ...intellectual history...8-)

We do not realize how necessary fluids are for our survival. As Tom Standage states, we can live 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 we migrate there? :-))

Initially, I did not plan to buy this book. I was trying to find "The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee" by Stewart Lee Allen.

Tom Standage divided the history of the world into six periods, each forming a different chapter in the book: Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt; Wine in Greece and Rome; Spirits in the Colonial Period; Coffee in the Age of Reason; Tea and the British empire; Coca-Cola and the Rise of America. Three are alcohol beverages, and three caffeine delights.

The idea for the book came to Tom Standage 'while reading an article in my Sunday newspaper about a wine said to have been one of Napoleon's favourites during exile: Vin de Constance. It is a sweet wine, made in the Constantia region of South Africa, which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the heroine is advised to drink it because of its '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'."

There is perhaps a more subtle, unintentional, humor buried in the amazing facts, and the reader needs to concentrate. It can cramp the reader's style a bit on the think-tank. So much so that I personally often fell asleep and had to reread everything in a new session, which made it tedious in some instances. But the facts are worth learning!

It certainly sheds a bright new light on world history. The book is so laden with information that I found it too much to absorb in one sitting. For instance: the ancient old tea culture of the Chinese which was only discovered hundreds of years later by the Brits, changed the latter's foreign policy forever; brandy and rum, developed from the Arabian knowledge of chemistry, inspired the age of Exploration; Greeks spread their influence through their exports of wine all over the world.

The book encourages thought. Slavery, wars, and sanctions were often fueled by some of these beverages. Reading it all in one book, from Tom Standage's perspective, turns these facts into eye-openers.

For instance: P 80:

"...herbs, honey, 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.

While modern wine drinkers may turn up their noses at the Greek and Roman use of additives, it is not that different from the modern use of oak as a flavoring agent, often to make otherwise unremarkable wines more palatable.

Below these adulterated wines was posca, a drink made by mixing water with wine that had turned sour and vinegar-like. Posca was commonly issued to Roman soldiers when better wines were unavailable, for example, during long campaigns. It was, in effect, a form of portable water-purification technology for the Roman army. When a Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge dipped in wine during his crucifixion, the wine in question would have been posca."

The location where you read the book does not matter. What is more important is that the information shared in the book ensures a long relaxing discussion on a Sunday afternoon with friends and family. It gives some mundane moments the more meaningful memories it needs.

I initially gave it three stars only because it was not an easy read. I really needed to keep all my ducks in a row for this one. But in retrospect, I changed my mind. His research was excellent!

It is a good read for someone who wants to know how the development of chemistry from ancient times until now changed our world - in an easy, non-scientific, but factual read.

It is the only book I offer to guests to take to bed with them!

An interesting way of breaking history up by beer, wine, whiskey, coffee, tea, & cola. Each came into its own in our history & may well have driven it in some ways. The basic idea along with a thumbnail of each is laid out in the introduction pretty well. Well enough that I didn't want to continue listening after about half the first section on beer. I didn't care much for the narrator & that wasn't helped by repetitious writing. This would probably be a great book to read, though.

It's doubtful, but I might get back to it at some point.

Excellent book about 6 drinks (beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Cola) that impacted live of mankind through different ages.

An interesting and engaging way to learn about history. I found it fascinating. Will look on these beverages through new lenses now.

تاریخ جهان در 6 لیوان
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.

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.