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
The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (actually manmade, since it was precipitated by a wealthy country club dam which had long been the source of justified misgivings). This then is a routine rundown of the catastrophe of May 31st, 1889, the biggest news story since Lincoln's murder in which thousands died. The most interesting incidental: a baby floated unharmed in its cradle for eighty miles.... Perhaps of local interest-but it lacks the Lord-ly touch.
Pub Date: March 18, 1968
ISBN: 0671207148
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968
IN THE NEWS
Authoritative and thorough fare for royal watchers.
The longtime editor of Majesty magazine presents a refreshingly nonhagiographic biography of Prince Philip (b. 1921).
In her latest book on the royal family, Seward, a leading expert on the subject, paints a picture of a complex figure: a man of intelligence and energy with a wide array of achievements who has also been a bad father and a difficult, cantankerous boor. Born a prince in Greece, Philip's links to British, Danish, German, and Russian royal bloodlines were so impeccable that the fact that he came into his marriage with two suitcases of possessions to his name—plus a disgraced father, a schizophrenic mother, and four sisters married to Germans—was no obstacle. Third cousins, Elizabeth and Philip met when they were very young; the princess was utterly smitten at age 13. Philip's way with the ladies is well known—Daphne du Maurier is just one of many alleged lovers—but Seward downplays that element of his life. "What remains,” she writes, “is a combination of speculation, innuendo, and pure invention.” Ever the sportsman, Philip is "a very good cricketer, a world-class polo player, a race-winning yachtsman, and a world-champion carriage driver, and…has flown thousands of hours in many types of aircraft." He's also a passionate conservationist, a talented interior decorator, and co-author of a philosophy book that explores such questions as "What are we doing here? What is the point of existence?” Seward's all-seeing gaze follows the man into his rural retirement, by which time "the divorces of three out of four of his children, the divorce of his first grandson, and the problems with his grandson Prince Harry and, more poignantly, his own son Prince Andrew make a depressing appraisal." In 2019, at age 97, he was involved in a car accident that injured civilians, and he gave up his keys. Thereafter, he "pounced on the idea of resurrecting the late Queen Mother’s golf buggy." We leave him with his memories, tooling around the farm.
Authoritative and thorough fare for royal watchers.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982129-75-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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