A great account of six drinks which were important at different times through the ages (though many of them remained quite important even after they were the drink: beer, wine, spirits (rum/whiskey), tea, coffee, soda. One of the best ways to describe human history.

It is possible to view history through almost any lens...in this case the author chose drinks to tell a story of the world's development. Filled with interesting facts and carefully researched, the author deftly recounts human/political/religious events from the perspective of six different drinks. Interestingly, half of them contain no alcohol!

I would have rated it higher were it not for the sometimes confusing prose. Transitional phrases from one subtopic to the next did not have the flow needed to cover such an enormous time span seamlessly. But I would definitely recommend it.

This was one of the most unique ways to learn (some) world history that I’ve ever encountered, especially because of how each of these 6 drinks (and the bonus 7th drink) are part of my life. Super interesting and informative.

This got recommended at Lunacon at more than one panel I was at. The title is a bit hyperbolic. The six drinks discussed are indeed significant in the history of beverages, and their adoption occured at otherwise historically significant times, but sometimes they were just harbringers, or even merely coinciding -- though sometimes they were indeed movers and shakers in history. Then, the drinks by themselves can be fascinating.


Beer is the first, and obviously, the least well-documented, since it predates writing. We don't even know if mead or wine might have been actually first. But we have archeological evidence of humanity's beginning to harvest grains and store them, and soon after, they must have made two discoveries. One is that grain that is wetted and allowed to start sprouting becomes sweet -- a rare treat in that time. The other was that a mix of water and grain would, after a few days, become alcoholic. Great stuff, because it was safer than water to drink, and when drunk before the fermentation ended, would contain suspended yeast, full of good nutrition. "Beer and bread" were standard for laborers, and Enkidu's savage state was marked by a lack of knowledge of those two dishes. Beer making advanced with such discoveries as keeping on using the same tub made better beer -- it would contain yeast from the last time. And we have very early pictures of two men drinking from a pot with straws, necessarily because of all the flotsam in the drink. Mesopatmia treated drunkness more humorously, and Egypt more gravely, with many injunctions against it, but both civilizations drank. (I think some of this is more speculative than it is treated.)

Later, they also started to drink "the beer of the mountains" or wine. There was a time when it was fantasically expensive, and people would float it down river from the mountains and then break up the rafts and sell them for a tenth of what they had originally cost, because the price of the wine would justify it, and for a few centuries it was tribute, but it grew less expensive, partly because the Greeks were shipping it everywhere. (Whereupon he goes into the technicalities of feasting and wine with Romans and Greeks -- the Romans would graduate the vintages at a feast by status, and once a man was caught because his host sent out a slave to buy a better vintage because he could not give his high status guest his own wine.) And the continuation of wine throughout the Middle Ages.

Which also saw the development of alchemy, and the refinement of distilling arts until we get spirits. And its connection with the slave trade. And its discovery of rum -- handily made from the byproducts of making sugar. Great Britain tried to ban the importation of molasses from the French islands to the American colonies, which would have raised prices and limited supplies, because the molasses from the British islands was not only inferior but insufficient for the amount of rum drunk. Not that America didn't have its own problems, especially when people inland began turning to whisky, which needed local, not imported, ingredients.

Coffee was discovered in Arabia, where some people tried to ban it as an intoxicant for its mental effects. And spread to Europe despite horrors from occasional physicians. Boiling the water made it, like all the alcoholic drinks, safer than water, and it was very popular with the information classes of the day, the expanding class of clerks, for instance. Coffee houses became important centers of trade and discussion, and even scientific lectures. The Stock Exchange began in a coffee house, though they had to leave when a broker complained of exclusion from a public location.

Tea was introduced to England by Charles II's bride, and it took a while to really take off, because it was more expensive, but it did manage. It was even better than coffee, because of its anti-bacterial properties which meant that even boiling the water had some help. The age of its discovery in China was somewhat exaggerated in the records, and for a time under the Monguls, it was not as important because the emperors prefered their own drinks, but it spread again after that dynasty. It also spread in England, where a merchant named Twinings actually opened a tea store next to his coffee shop so women, who couldn't go into the coffee shop, could buy the tea. His company's logo is still in use -- the oldest continually used logo. Tea lead to other effects, too, such as that which the tea tax had the American colonies (though it didn't cause tea to be supplanted by coffee, because the supply was restored after the war ended, and not until the mid-nineteenth century did coffee take over), and the opium trade to China, because the East India Company was finding the rising price of silver cutting into its profits, and China was not interested in other goods. And then the company began to raise tea in India, devastating the China tea trade, and contributing to China's instability.

And finally there is Coca-Cola, originally a patent medicine made by a man who promulgated a lot of them, and urgently needed a temperance one -- without alcohol. It depended on the invention of sparkling waters, which were first treated as medicinal, and then sold with flavors but still with the virtuous aura. It's no accident that soda fountains were a feature of drug stories. Coca-Cola spread quickly part because they just sold the syrup and the druggists loved it. Then, as a headache remedy, it had an intristically limited audience. It went for Refreshing, instead. The Pure Food and Drug Act at first looked good for it, removing some rivals, but then there was a big law suit accusing it of being contaminated by containing caffeine -- and sold to children, even, unlike tea or coffee. They won. The judge ruled that it was not a contaminant because it was part of the recipe. Still, Coca-Cola agreed not to use children in its ads, which help explain its use of Santa Claus in ads. Whereupon it managed to weather the repeal of Prohibition, and the Depression, and a new rival, During World War II, they were setting up plants on the military bases so that service men could get it as the standard price.

It concludes with an epilogue about bottled water -- back to the beginning, when we had no other beverages.

There have been a lot of interesting wrinkles in the history of drinks.

Very readable with interesting detail

This is about six beverages that changed world history. They are: beer, wine, distilled liquor, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola.

Author Tom Standage begins by taking us back to the dawn of the agricultural age with beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and in pre-Columbian Europe. Beer was the drink of choice for just about everybody because there was little else to drink (no coffee, no tea, and only the occasional grape or fruit wine or mead made from honey). And beer was actually better for you than water because the alcohol in beer killed bacteria and other parasites. This is a theme that comes up again and again in the book: all these beverages were better than water because they were safer to drink than water. Beer was also a major source of calories for those who drank it. Interesting enough the Egyptians drank their beer with straws and in the Middle Ages in Europe almost everybody had beer and/or beer soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course most of the beer had about half the alcohol that is typically in beer today--probably about three percent versus today's six percent.

Next Standage returns us to the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome as we learn about wine. Both the Greeks and the Romans drank their wine mixed with water. That was the only civilized way. Only barbarians and other uncouth people drank wine straight. The Greeks sometimes flavored their wines with (gulp!) seawater. The Romans also adulterated their wines with all sorts of herbs, honey and even pitch (as a preservative). It's clear that their wines weren't all that good, nothing like the quality we have today, except perhaps for a few drunk only by emperors and others at the pinnacle of power.

Chapters 5 and 6 are about distilled liquor, especially rum and whiskey. Standage recalls the slave/sugar/rum trade and why it developed and how it worked. Interesting is the fact that the colonists in America at first preferred rum since it was relatively cheap, was concentrated and did not spoil easily. Standage even calls rum the drink of the American revolution. (p. 121) Then the colonists switched to whiskey after they began growing grains inland, and to avoid the cost of taxed molasses (from which rum was made). Standage doesn't mention it, but in many places in America at one point in our history hard cider made from apples was the only easily gotten alcoholic drink. The colonists drank little beer because it was hard to grow the grain from which beer is made near coastal settlements, and beer did not easily survive long ocean voyages.

Coffee comes next. That and the Age of Reason. Standage, along with other authorities that I have read credit coffee with sobering up Europe and ushering in rapid social, scientific, technological, and social change. Instead of beer for breakfast, now it was off to the coffeehouse and talk of trade, science and revolution. Coffee was safer than water because the water was boiled to make the coffee.

The story of tea is in chapters 9 and 10. Standage recalls the mighty East India Company, more powerful than almost any government on earth at one time. And he recalls how the British traded opium to the Chinese for silver with which to buy tea. And then there was that little party in the Boston harbor... It is notable that in every instance governments quickly began taxing the popular beverages. Incidentally, tea was (and is) safer than water not only because the water is typically boiled (although not always) but because tea contains tannins which are anti-bacterial.

The last two chapters are devoted to Coca-Cola (and to much less extent, Pepsi-Cola and other sodas). Standage hails Coca-Cola as the symbol of America's dominance in the 20th century. He chronicles the story of its invention and how it grew out of the patent medicine business and how it eventually went worldwide. By the way, Coca-Cola is only as safe as the water from which it is made.

There is an Epilogue entitled "Back to the Source" on the growing consumption of bottled water, and an interesting Appendix, "In Search of Ancient Drinks" in which Standage reports on attempts to recreate hop-less beers and ancient wines.

Bottom line: very readable and full of interesting detail. One of the best books of its type that I have read.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

I read about this book and was interested in the concept. How have various drinks helped shape human history? I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I got was a light read that was entertaining and informative. Discussed are beer, wine, rum, coffee, tea, and Coke. I know it sounds like a weird and random assortment, but the author makes it work.

Beer was one of the first drinks mankind made, and some theories about how it happened, ancient stories about it, and its importance to ancient cultures are all covered. Next up is wine, which the author mostly associates with the Greek and Roman peoples. Rum played a big part in the slave trade and, as an aside, he throws in the Whiskey Rebellion, a little-known sequel to the American Revolution. Coffee started in Arab lands, was brought East by traders, and then coffeehouses became all the rage, and had something to do with such diverse things as Newton's Theory of Gravity and the French Revolution. Tea is big in the histories of China, England, and India, and he talks about how it became THE English drink, and the link to the Opium Wars. To wrap it up, what modern drink could sum up the 20th century better than Coca Cola?

It's an interesting read, and not really taxing to follow. I enjoyed it, and if you like learning history in a slightly different way, you may as well.

Yeah, this was terrible. No other way to put it. The only part that even somewhat redeemed this book was the Coca-Cola section, and that wasn’t even enough to boost it higher than one star.

I really liked this book! It offers a fascinating overview through the histories of beer, wine, liquor, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. I knew most of the information in this book in a general way, so I really liked that Standage made connections that I didn't realize or know about and that he filled in gaps of history that I knew more broadly. I didn't know that beer originated in Mesopotamia and was as old as it is, which I found fascinating to read about. Obviously, any time you get one of these history books, there is tons of information about each category that is going to be left out. Also, Standage lives in London, and this book definitely gives a Western perspective on these drinks. It discusses the origins as being Eastern or Middle Eastern in some cases, but it doesn't talk about the beverages' lives in those regions. Rather, Standage goes into how the beverages moved west and impacted Western culture. However, he doesn't avoid conversations about Westernization and imperialism. He offers a balanced perspective on these things when possible and a critique on them when necessary.
Overall, this book is a fun way to explore connections you might never have thought possible, to see the ways that our culture is still impacted by ancient or really old beverages, and to learn something about regions beyond our own. I had fun reading it, and I definitely recommend it!

A good one! To know the origin of the drinks and the socio-economic and cultural impacts at those time. Surely enjoyable if you are fan of both history and beverages.. Are you that much lucky?

However this book has been to many places when I was reading it(for years) and had many drinks with me as well. It's not something you add to a book review but I wanted to keep the memory of the places with this book so here they are- AB coffee in Comilla, Saffron in sylhet, probably Takeout in Dhaka, Cocacola plant of Abdul monem, Fulkoli of Pathantulla....

My favorite chapters were wine, coffee, and Coca-Cola

I had to read this for my history class so it wasn't exactly my number one pick. Overall though, it was interesting and I did like the overview provided by the author:
1. stone age brew
2. civilized beer
3. delight of wine
4. imperial vine/wine
5. high spirits, high seas
6. drinks that built America (rum, whiskey, etc. )
7. great soberer, coffee
8. coffeehouse internet
9. empires of tea
10. tea power
11. soda to cola
12. globalization in a bottle

I enjoyed this overview of six influential and historically important beverages throughout human history. This is a very broad, surface-level overview, but that's not a bad thing! I liked how the author focused on each beverage in regards to a specific time/place. It's inspired me to try and read further about these topics.