Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat Read. Fine Historical Connections. Small lapses.
Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2005
`A History of the World in 6 Glasses' by Tom Standage is an addition to a great genre of popular non-fiction on some important, but often ignored subject in the same vein as `Robbing the Bees' by Holley Bishop, Mark Kurlansky's works, `Cod' and `Salt' and `New Yorker' writer, Susan Orlean's `The Orchid Thief'. In fact, like Kurlansky, Master Standage has done at least two other books in this genre to date, `The Victorian Internet' and `The Turk'.
This volume presents a part of the history of six of the world's most important beverages, beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola, or, more accurately American cola drinks. Each of the six essays does not cover the whole history of each beverage. It only covers the time and place in which each beverage became popular. There are many dissimilarities between the six, but there are also important similarities. The author points out that all six contain an important psychoactive ingredient. The first three contain alcohol and the second three contain caffeine. What the author notes in each essay is that each beverage was also considered or was actually an aid to health or an improvement to water as a safe beverage in that either the alcohol or the heating in the preparation of the drink, or some chemicals in the source material helped kill any bacteria in the water used to make the beverages.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book are the connections made by the author between his primary subject and other major social and economic facts of the times in which the beverage became popular. One of the more interesting `sidebars' are the relative fates of wine and coffee in Christian and Muslim cultures, where Christians embraced wine while Muslims, especially Arabs used coffee as a healthy substitute with almost exactly opposite effects from wine. A second interesting sidebar (and, I believe, the subject of his earlier book `The Victorian Internet' is the influence of coffeehouses on 17th and 18th century commerce, art, and politics in London. A third interesting note is the rundown on the wines and other potables of ancient Rome. Filling in what I know about Italian drinking, I can recognize the origins, for example of grappa, made from the dregs of the wine making process.
While one may have no argument with the importance of all six beverages, I can't help wondering why the author picked Coca-Cola over hot chocolate. Part of the reason may be that the stories of chocolate and coffee are just too similar to make an interesting contrast. Also, the arrival of coffee, tea, and chocolate all happened at about the same time, so the historical contexts are very similar. I was also surprised that his story on Coca-Cola did not include the time and circumstances surrounding the removal of coca from the drink.
Unlike some works on the history or husbandry of culinary subjects, there is virtually nothing in this book on `how to'. There is not one word on the chemistry of fermentation as it relates to beer, wine, or tea. There is virtually no mention of different varieties of grape and just a few statements on grape varieties and grape culture outside of ancient Greece and Rome. There is much more said about the economics of wine making and trade, just as there is much on the economics of rum, slaves and molasses, forming the three sides of the famous New England to Africa to Caribbean trading triangle active up to the Civil War.
Mr. Standage has very credible credentials as a writer and editor on technical matters, but I found just a few little questions in his presentation of historical facts. The first statement which tickled my skeptical bone was the reference to the `Fertile Crescent' as the arc from the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the uplands of the Nile in ancient Egypt. In my freshman history of the western world class, the `Fertile Crescent' was described as the arc from the Persian Gulf to the Levant, basically following the course of the Tigris and Euphrates. I quickly checked my Times Atlas of Archeology that confirmed my memory from many years ago. The Nile and the growth of the Egyptian civilizations, while parallel to those that began with Akkad and Sumer were done on independent lines, with the yearly Nile flooding providing a significantly different agricultural environment than the non-flooding rivers of Mesopotamia.
A second and more subtle scholarly indiscretion is in the author's treatment of the theory of humors created by the great Greek and Roman medical thinkers such as Hippocrates and Galen. This theory posits four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile and an imbalance between the four being the explanation for various diseases. The author rather intemperately describes this theory, held by thousands of medical practitioners for 2000 years as `utter nonsense', and revealed to be so by 19th century medical research.
My first thought is that the practice of bleeding with leaches was explained and justified by this theory, and I have seen recent articles stating that bleeding with leeches retains some good medical effects. This leads me to the belief that there were probably other empirically successful practices that were explained by the humors theory. It was certainly not far fetched, as at least three out of the four fluids can be seen, smelled, tasted, and acted upon within the body. I suggest the author reread his Thomas Kuhn (`The Structure of Scientific Revolutions') to see how this weak and, by today's standards, poorly supported theory served its purpose as the best they had at the time.
In spite of these hiccups, this is a great read, even if it strays from its primary subjects now and again. And, it is properly documented with references so that if any statement strikes a chord of interest, you have the means of tracking down the author's sources.
