Bostwick’s beercentric account of the world will delight beer lovers, food historians and home brewers.
The often dry topic of world history becomes a jovial and well-lubricated trek through time and place in this narrative detailing the origins of beer.
When not tending his bees, at home brewing beer or occasionally working as a bartender, Bostwick (co-author: Beer Craft: A Simple Guide to Making Great Beer, 2011) writes about his favorite subject for such publications as the Wall Street Journal and GQ. Seeking to do more than just describe the sensory experience of a hoppy IPA, an acidic lambic or a smooth golden pilsner, the author constructs his account around the human story of beer: the brewers. Bostwick’s storytelling style resembles that of a favorite college professor whose delivery is erudite but fun and easy to digest. The author travels through time relating the stories of servants in Babylonia, medieval monks, Nordic shamans, early American settlers, German immigrants in America’s heartland, contemporary microbrewers and bottom-line corporate advertisers, weaving a lively rendition of the evolving creation story of beer. Bostwick combines historical research with on-the-ground reporting of the current state of affairs in brewing, which means trips to a farmhouse in Newport, Oregon, a brewery outside Portland, Maine, and Boston for a visit with the CEO of the biggest craft brewery in America. Wanting to “taste the richness of history,” the author recounts how hops, corn, molasses, pumpkins, maple sap, spices and yeast create different tastes in the finished product. Bostwick also recounts his attempts at several home brews of past favorites, including a bread beer whose recipe he found in a 3,800-year-old poem dedicated to the goddess of beer and a Thanksgiving tribute to George Washington’s home brew.
Bostwick’s beercentric account of the world will delight beer lovers, food historians and home brewers.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-393-23914-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
