A History Of The World In 6 Glasses (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Apologies to all here: much of what follows are notes that I took on some interesting points, so please forgive the rambling, disorganized narrative.The "Six Glasses" are: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. This book is a history of the world through the lens of the six glasses, so it's selective in a geographical sense, but fairly comprehensive in a temporal sense. Standage's book is just the right length: long enough to include important details, but short enough to keep the reader's interest. It's perfect as "pop history." Standage's initial chapter on beer, however, is a disappointment! He only gets us to 1335 B.C.E. I'm interested in beer. It's my favorite drink (sharing first place with coffee). So I'm feeling slighted. There's a lot to know about the development of beer, but Standage doesn't even get us to the point where we started adding hops. (He only makes the statement that this did not happen until the Middle Ages). We get no sense of the role of beer in cultures other than those of ancient Sumeria and Egypt. The only tidbit worth remembering about beer is that Egyptian pharaohs liked to be buried with beer-brewing equipment. I'll have to write a will now, which specifies the same for me! (On second thought, I'll say that the image of Sumerians drinking beer from long, bent straws that dip into gigantic pots that tower over their heads was amusing.)The book starts to pick up some steam when it describes how the Ancient Greeks drank wine. Elaborate rituals, called "symposion" (think Plato's Symposium) were commonplace. Wine was served in a giant krater (a pot) and special implements and bowls were used to extract and drink it. Furthermore, wine was always diluted with water. It was considered barbaric to drink full-strength wine. Drunkenness was discouraged; moderation encouraged. Wine was meant to enhance subtle and insightful conversation, not meant to incite rowdy drunkenness. Vast quantities of wine were traded by ship.Romans continued the wine tradition, exporting it to the northern countries, and even using wine that had "turned" as a water-purifying agent for soldiers who were out on long campaigns. Apparently, this was what was actually on the vinegar sponge that was offered to Jesus while he hung on the cross. There's an interesting passage about Galen and Marcus Aurelius. Galen prescribed wine as health tonic. Apparently, the older and more expensive the vintage, the better! Even so, it was used to wash down some rather vile medicinal concoctions (think ear of bat, eye of toad, etc.)Eventually, the Moors of Spain discovered that wine could be distilled in order to increase the alcohol content. The word "alcohol" comes from the Arabic word for distilled antinomy, which was used as eye shadow. Odd to think that Muslims, who now renounce it, were the inventors of strong spirits!Standage also makes an interesting point about how much Arab learning (algebra, trigonometry, astronomy) was used by Western Europeans in their push to find an alternate route to the East. This was felt to be necessary because Arabs dominated the spice trade routes to the east, so Western Europeans thought perhaps they could find their own route to China through the west.What they found, instead of a new road to China, was a new place to grow sugar cane! That place was the Caribbean. (Except here's another weird twist: the Arabs had somehow obtained sugar cane from Polynesians? Gotta research this one!) In Barbados, the English eventually discovered the recipe for rum, which is made from molasses -- a waste product of sugar production. Rum -- mixed with lime juice, sugar, and water -- became "grog," which helped the British navy avoid scurvy and defeat the Spanish at Trafalgar. Interesting point by Standage here, about how alcohol content was tested by heating rum with a few grains of gunpowder. If the gunpowder could just barely be brought to the ignition point, that meant the rum was about 50% alcohol, and thus suitable for sailors.Rum also became instrumental in the slave trade. Africans could sell slaves for rum. The slaves would be shipped to the Caribbean to grow sugar cane, and the cycle could be perpetuated. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!Interestingly, a tax favoring British molasses (which was used in the American Colonies to make cheap rum) was credited by John Adams as one of the main spurs of the American Revolution. Standage claims that rum was the most widely consumed drink in colonial America. Early American settlers complained that the unavailability of alcohol was one of the most unbearable hardships of the new world. So when John Winthrop came over, his ship was laden with 10,0000 gallons of beer! Rum, however, had the advantage of being less perishable than beer, and it could be cheaply made in the colonies wherever molasses was imported. So it could be readily shipped, and readily made in port cities.Although rum could be cheaply made in ports, it got more expensive to produce as one ventured inland, where molasses became scarce. Furthermore, Irish and Scottish immigrants sought to make whiskey without easy access to barley. So they used rye and corn. Apparently, excellent corn mash whiskey was made in Bourbon County, KY (hence the name "Bourbon Whiskey"). The first rebellion against the U.S. Government was inspired by an excise tax on whiskey (the tax was imposed on production, and was not dependent upon sale). The government flexed its muscles by sending troops to western Pennsylvania, in order to quell the violence against tax collectors. Standage seems to suggest that this was the first real test of federal power in the U.S. The distillers backed down, and later the government abolished the tax.As Standage moves on to coffee, I was struck by several revelations. First, that London was the first big center of coffee houses! Although we associate the British with tea, coffee was all the rage well before the tea boom got going. Standage makes a comparison of coffee houses to today's Internet. At first, I was skeptical of this claim. Yet it turns out that each coffee house was devoted to a particular trade or art! And furthermore, people picked up their mail and got their news at coffee-houses. Sometimes runners would circulate news from one coffee house to the next. So the comparison to the Internet(today's central mechanism for information exchange) is apt. Standage asserts that English coffee houses were places where scientific, political, and philosophical ideas could be openly discussed. Apparently, some coffee-house arguments about gravity and its relation to elliptical orbits caused some head-butting between Christopher Wren, Thomas Hooke, and Edmund Halley. Newton finally settled the argument by publishing the Principia -- which Standage claims was, at least in part, inspired by the coffee house argument!French coffee houses were another matter. Apparently, they were rife with government spies. Woe betide he who openly challenged the establishment! He'd end up in the Bastille, or flee to England like Voltaire did. There's an interesting story about how a French sailor brought coffee to the Caribbean. The only coffee plant in Paris was in an inaccessible royal garden. So the sailor, de Clieu, persuaded a doctor to claim (falsely) that a cutting from the tree was necessary to prepare medicine for a patient. Thanks to de Clieu's smuggling act, coffee plantations were eventually established in Brazil, which became the world's largest exporter of coffee. It seems that the French won the trade contest with the Dutch, who had already established coffee plantations in the East Indies, including Java. And the poor Arabs, who invented coffee, never really got much economic benefit from it.Perhaps the most surprising revelation about coffee is the controversy it caused wherever it was introduced. Even in Arabia, it was compared to alcohol because of its mood-altering properties. In the west, it was considered by the old guard to be culturally subversive -- which I suppose it was, but in a good way. The coffee house cultures were places where people could test new ideas in an informal setting. Much intellectual progress was accomplished there. In the chapter on tea I discovered a new drink: koumiss (fermented mare's milk!) At the end of Sung Dynasty, the Mongols took control of China. Koumiss was favored over tea by the Mongols, who lived on their horses. At the height of their power, Kublai Khan's brother erected a fountain that dispensed rice beer from China, grape wine from Persia, mead from Eurasia, and koumiss! What a marvelous image! The Mongolian empire was short-lived, so perhaps that's why I never heard of koumiss. Anyway, China got the ball rolling when it comes to tea, and it probably started gaining in popularity in the First Century, C.E. Chinese control of the tea trade actually made it more expensive than coffee for quite some time, which helps to explain why coffee was initially more popular than tea in Europe. Europeans had their own coffee plantations in the West and East Indies long before they had their own tea plantations (eventually in British-controlled India).European-controlled tea plantations didn't come until the British East India Company discovered that tea could be grown in India, some time in the 1860's. If I remember correctly, the BEIC at some point had more money than Great Britain itself, and paid ten percent of Britain's tax revenue. And it operated almost like a government unto itself in India. As the BEIC was able to bring the cost of tea down not only by growing it, but by manufacturing and shipping it as well, tea became the universal drink of Britain (ca. 1860 forward). It had formerly been the exclusive drink of the elite and the wealthy. There's an interesting interlude, beginning in 1839 or so, called "The Opium Wars." The British, at this time still dependent on trading for tea in China, had nothing to offer the Chinese except opium from India. This was problematic, however, because the Chinese had outlawed opium! So the BEIC used intermediaries to sell the opium for silver, which was the only thing the Chinese would accept in exchange for tea. When the Chinese became wise to this plot, they destroyed massive quantities of illegal opium. The British then declared a war (which they won with superior military and naval technology) and demanded reparations for the lost contraband! Furthermore, this is when the British invaded Hong Kong and made it part of their own political sphere. One extremely interesting point here is that tea was originally only green tea. Green tea is made from the same leaves as black tea, except that less processing is involved. Black tea is made by scoring and oxidizing the leaves before drying them. Standage points out that black tea was considered inferior by the Chinese. But for the British, it was better because it was less perishable and easier to ship long distance. Furthermore, much tea was adulterated with "filler," like sawdust, grass, bugs, etc. Filler used in green tea tended to be toxic, whereas the fillers used to bulk up black tea were generally safer. So black tea thus became the British standard. I was quite amused by Standage's chapter on the final drink: Coca-Cola. I never cared for Coca-Cola. Even as a child, I hated how it left a tacky film on my teeth! Nevertheless, its origins are quite interesting. It turns out that Coca-Cola was originally formulated by John Pemberton, in Atlanta. He was a manufacturer of "patent medicine," which is a term for unregulated folk-style remedies, also known as "nostrums." See Patent Medicine HistoryMost patent medicines were herbal or vegetable oil extracts in a suspension of alcohol. In the early 20th century, the U.S. Government finally created the FDA, in order to protect consumers from adulterated foods, poor sanitation practices in abattoirs, and from false claims about the medicinal properties of patent medicines. Because Coca-Cola contained caffeine and even (originally) a very mild dose of alkaloid stimulants (from coca leaves), the U.S. Government eventually brought suit against Coca-Cola. Apparently, the government's concern was that Coca-Cola was the first stimulant marketed to children. But the suit was brought on the ground that the name of the drink was misleading. According to Standage, Coca-Cola prevailed in the trial court (which held that the drink was flavored with kola nut, and was hence "pure"). On appeal, however, Coca-Cola had a minor loss which resulted in the company's agreement to reduce the caffeine content. Amazingly, Coca-Cola went on to become a global drink, spread in part by military endorsement. Coca-Cola actually partnered with the U.S. military during WWII, to the extent that Coca-Cola plants were constructed on military bases. Eventually, the world began to associate Coca-Cola with the United States. Standage claims that "Coca-Cola" is one of the world's most readily understood words, after "O.K." There's much interesting material in Standage's penultimate chapter about the hostility toward Coca-Cola by the Soviet Bloc and the Arab countries. I appreciated how Standage concluded his book with water, and the bottled water craze. He points out that, in the U.S., a bottle of water costs more by volume than gasoline, but people still buy it, even though they can get a superior product straight from their home taps, at a small fraction of the cost. I also appreciated Standage's acknowledgment of the importance of potable water to world political stability and human health in general. After all, the six drinks were all initially employed (at least in part) as water-purifiers of one sort or another.Overall, this was a very entertaining and well-written book!
I seem to be in a phase where I like books that show me the hidden life of the everyday things all around us, especially food and drink. A few years ago I read "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany", by Bill Buford, which started me on this quest, which was followed by several more books, including "The Omnivore's Dilemma", by Michael Pollan. Most recently I read "The Search for God and Guinness", by Stephen Mansfield.Now, I've finished "A History of the World in 6 Glasses", by Tom Standage, which connects the span of human history to 6 different beverages that affected history culturally, politically, anthropologically, nutritionally, and economically. The six, in rough order of their era of greatest influence, are beer, wine, whiskey, coffee, tea, and cola. More broadly, you could have called the book "A History of the World in Two Brain-Altering Chemicals: Alcohol and Caffeine."It is a fascinating look at how these drinks sometimes have been responsible for pivotal moments in history, causing one civilization to rise and another to fall. While human affairs are much more complicated than one factor can explain, we can't deny that one of the reasons ancient tribes turned from peripatetic hunting-gathering to more stationary agriculture was the need to cultivate grains for beer, for instance. (Standage points out that of course the grains were also used for bread too, but bread and beer were nearly interchangeable in most places, two phases of cooking of the same product. Beer was "liquid bread" and bread was "solid beer.")Most the drinks had origins--or at least early primary uses--in religious rituals, especially beer, wine, coffee, and tea. Whiskey and cola, which were much more modern inventions were just consumer products. Eventually, all of them made the leap to common use. What made them significant was their eventual ubiquity, even if at first they were reserved to the elites.There were also some very interesting anecdotes, such as the story of how coffee came to Europe from the Middle East. Some theologians rejected it as a Muslim invention, thus of the devil, while others embraced. So a decision had to be made.Shortly before his death in 1605, Pope Clement VIII was asked to state the Catholic church's position on coffee. At the time, the drink was a novelty little known in Europe except among botanists and medical men, including those at the University of Padua, a leading center for medical research. Coffee's religious opponents argued that coffee was evil: They contended that since Muslims were unable to drink wine, the holy drink of Christians, the devil had punished them with coffee instead. But the pope had the final say. A Venetian merchant provided a small sample for inspection, and Clement decided to taste the new drink before making his decision. The story goes that he was so enchanted by its taste and aroma that he approved its consumption by Christians.Other sources claim he said: "This devil's drink is so delicious...we should cheat the devil by baptizing it." True or not, I will be sure to thank Pope Clement VIII and pray for him every day over my morning cup of joe.Another interesting tidbit concerned the importance of tea to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 18th and 19th century. As labor became less about individual craftsmen and more about unskilled workers who could maintain machines in monotonous repitition over long hours, tea and tea breaks helped them to remain alert and concentrate. Likewise, even as the factory workers were gathering together in closer working and living conditions, waterborne illnesses became almost extinct, not just due to the boiling of water for tea, but for the phenolic acids--the tannins--in the tea itself.Infants benefited too, since the antibacterial phenolics in tea pass easily into the breast milk of nursing mothers. This lowered infant mortality and provided a large labor pool just as the Industrial Revolution took hold.In fact, every one of the six drinks was considered for both their positive and negative effects on society. Coffee led to 16th-century coffeehouses that were the locus of the Scientific Revolution that led to the Enlightenment, democracy, free-market economics, and more. The Chinese stranglehold on tea production and insistence on Westerners buying it with silver, not trading it for Western goods, led to the creation of the opium trade from India that eventually destabilized China in the 19th century, which last through the 20th century until the rise of Communism.While these six beverages can't be said to have caused the most important and decisive moments of history, they often played significant roles in moments that caused the course of history to go in one direction and not the other. If not for the wine it exported, would Greece have risen to a great culture that brought us philosophy and so much else?Without tea or rum/whiskey, would Great Britain have become the empire on whose flag the sun never sets? Maybe, maybe in a different form or in a different time, but undoubtedly different."A History of the World in Six Glasses" was a fun and quick read that makes me want to delve more into the various individual elements it presents. Which is the best kind of book, isn't it?
What do You think about A History Of The World In 6 Glasses (2006)?
Pop non-fiction with clever gimmick of six beverages to summarize world history. Plenty of interesting factoids. One problem is that the flip side of the cleverness of the gimmick is that all sorts of beverages are left out. The human consumption of animal milk, for example, is an interesting story with important implications but we don't learn about that. Another problem is that the research does not appear to be very deep and so some of the factoids don't seem to be true. For example, tea is credited with protecting the English from bacterial disease around the time of the industrial revolution. But that is when mortality was the highest overall, and if one looks at specific outbreaks like the great cholera epidemic of John Snow fame, it was specifically the beer drinkers who were spared. It makes some theoretical sense that tea should be helpful but that's different from there being any actual evidence of that. The book edges beyond cocktail-party chatter to serious stuff at the end in a polemic about water.
—Andy
Fantastic overview of world history as told through the lens of different drinks. A quick and approachable read, I would recommend it to anyone who would like to get a broad overview of world history told from a fun perspective. I would recommend to AP World History students, except for the fact that the first three drinks are alcoholic and I'm not sure it's a great idea to be promoting at school. Having said that, I hope to share some excerpts about coffee and Coca Cola (and possibly tea) with them next year!
—Carrie Emmerson
I noticed this book on a few friend's 'to-read' lists and thought I should write a review on it since I have read it a few years back and it is still very much part of our family's proud ...intellectual history...8-)We do not realize how necessary fluids are for our survival. As Tom Standage states, we can live without food for quite a while, but will die very soon of fluid deprivation. In fact, aren't we looking for water on Mars before we migrate there? :-)) Initially I did not plan to buy this book. I was trying to find "The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee" by Stewart Lee Allen. Tom Standage divided the history of the world into six periods, each forming a different chapter in the book: Beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt; Wine in Greece and Rome; Spirits in the Colonial Period; Coffee in the Age of Reason; Tea and the British empire; Coca-Cola and the Rise of America. Three are alcohol beverages and three caffeine. The idea for the book came to Tom Standage 'while reading an article in my Sunday newspaper about a wine said to have been one of Napoleon's favourites during exile: Vin de Constance. It is a sweet wine, made in the Constantia region of South Africa, which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the heroine is advised to drink it because of it's 'healing powers on a disappointed heart'. Charles Dickens also mentions the wine, referring in The Mystery of Edwin Drood to 'the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit'."There is perhaps a more subtle, unintentional, humor buried in the amazing facts, and the reader needs to concentrate. It can cramp the reader's style a bit on the think-tank. So much so that I personally often fell asleep and had to reread everything in a new session, which made it tedious in some instances. But the facts are worth learning! It certainly sheds a bright new light on world history. The book is so laden with information that I found it too much to absorb in one sitting. For instance: the ancient old tea culture of the Chinese which was only discovered hundreds of years later by the Brits, changed the latter's foreign policy forever; brandy and rum, developed from the Arabian knowledge of chemistry , inspired the age of Exploration; Greeks spread their influence through their exports of wine all over the world.The book encourage thought. Slavery, wars and sanctions were often fueled by some of these beverages. Reading it all in one book, from Tom Standage's perspective, turns these facts into eye-openers. For instance: P 80: "...herbs, honey and other additives were commonly added to lesser wines to conceal imperfections. Some Romans even carried herbs and other flavorings with them while traveling, to improve the taste of bad wine.While modern wine drinkers may turn op their noses at the Greek and Roman use of additives, it is not that different from the modern use of oak as flavoring agent, often to make otherwise unremarkable wines more palatable.Below these adulterated wines was posca, a drink made by mixing water with wine that had turned sour and vinegarlike. Posca was commonly tissued to Roman soldiers when better wines were unavailable, for example,during long campaigns. It was, in effect, a form of portable twater-purification technology for the Roman army. When a Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge dipped in wine during his crucifixion, the wine in question would have been posca."The location where you read the book does not matter. What is more important is that the information shared in the book ensures long relaxing discussion on a Sunday afternoon with friends and family. It gives some mundane moments the more meaningful memories it needs. I initially gave it three stars only because it was not an easy read. I really needed to keep all my ducks in a row for this one. But in retrospect I changed my mind. His research was excellent! It is a good read for someone who wants to know how the development of chemistry from ancient times until now changed our world - in an easy, non-scientific, but factual read. It is the only book I offer to guest to take to bed with them!
—Margitte
