title: A History of the World in 6 Glasses
author: Tom Standage
publication date: April 30, 2006
publisher: Walker & Company
If you don’t know already, then you’ll probably find out sooner or later than I am a bit of a geek. I love facts and trivia and useless little tidbits of information. So when The Kitchen Reader book club’s pick for May was A History of the World in 6 Glasses, I was excited to get my hands on it and dig in.
The premise of the book is interesting – Tom takes us through the history of human civilization by focusing on the six drinks that he believes played significant roles in the development of global history – beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and Coca-Cola. His theory is that each of these drinks helped spur humans onto the next cultural stage.
Now, I completely understand how difficult it would be for anyone to whittle down an entire history of the world into a few hundred pages, and then to make it interesting… definitely not an easy task. Tom makes a noble effort – most of the time, it was interesting to read a background on each of the six drinks and how their creation shaped our history. There were lots of little tidbits that were pretty interesting:
- that beer influenced early humans to become more agricultural-based (and in turn, to stay in one place rather than following the hunt)
- that wine was used to keep bacteria and illnesses at bay
- how coffee became popular in “coffee houses” that sparked intellectual and revolutionary ideas
- that Coca-Cola started off as a medicinal drink
I have to admit though, that most of the time, this book just didn’t hold my attention. And that’s really important when you’re reading something historical that requires at least some brain cells to be functioning. I do most of my reading while on my daily commute to and from work, and I had a really difficult time focusing on this book. I found my mind wandering a lot during some of the anecdotes and had to really focus to get through it.
This is still a much more interesting read than most history books, but part of me felt like I was reading a university thesis paper. While I appreciate Tom’s theory and found it an interesting way to approach history, this just wasn’t a book for me, I guess. It may be more appealing to history buffs more than food buffs, or maybe someone who’s really into the history of these particular six drinks.
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This book was so informative and I loved every bit of it!
I also read mostly on my commute and find books with anecdotes work well for that since the sessions are so short (I have to change from a bus to a train and then another bus). Well, it’s good that this rated above other history books for you. I admit I didn’t make it to the end. I am not interested in learning about Coke; haha! Thanks for your review.
I think part of why your thoughts might meander is that sometimes in his chapters the author also meanders in telling the tale by circling around to repeat himself and the narrative voice isn’t always very strong. His background is in writing essays, and happened to put a few in a book and he really wanted to stick to the rule of 2 chapters per drink, when I think it could have been fun to just have 4 large sections and multiple mini chapters that were a bit more tight in their point.