Meticulously researched and written with clear-minded authority, this book is a remarkable way of telling the human story.
A fascinating book that demonstrates the long and complex history behind the world’s most popular alcoholic beverage.
The first evidence of beer dates from about 11,000 B.C.E., with pottery in a cave in Israel containing residue of a drink made from fermented grains. In his latest book, Arthur, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, uses the development of beer to recount the story of civilization. Beer appears in nearly all ancient cultures, and the author enthusiastically ranges across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Recent research shows that beer production was as much a part of early settlements as bread making, with wild grains being domesticated for the purpose, and it was an important source of calories. As societies developed, beer types proliferated, and it even became a sort of currency. Workers on many of the world’s ancient monuments were often paid in beer. In Mesoamerica, beer was made from corn and maize and had a key role in religious ceremonies. The Vikings apparently liked their beer sweet, so they added honey and bog myrtle, which they took with them on their conquests. The British, as their empire expanded, spread hops all over the world, and it eventually became the most common ingredient. Arthur includes a selection of beer recipes, some of them thousands of years old, and notes that many of them are tasty, even to the modern palate. However, he believes that due to massive corporations, beer has become a somewhat generic product, solidly profitable but a little bland. On the positive side, he applauds the resurgence of craft beers, which use a multitude of ingredients to create complex, layered flavors. One way or another, he writes, the path ahead for beer looks as interesting as the road behind. So next time you raise a glass, think about the history contained within.
Meticulously researched and written with clear-minded authority, this book is a remarkable way of telling the human story.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-757980-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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