A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (2025 NF #7)

 (The current list) 

I'm tickled that I've done so well with nonfiction this year. It's never been that I don't like nonfiction. I just tend to get distracted and without a strong narrative thread to keep me focused, I have a tendency to put nonfiction down and lose track of it. 

Historically, the one area of nonfiction that I do read consistently concerns food. I like reading cookbooks and books about food production and politics, so it's surprising that it took me as long as it did to read A History of the World in 6 Glasses. I've had sitting in a stack for at least 10 years and it's right up my ally.

Really, this is a sort of general history of human development filtered through the lens of beverages. It's interesting because we've been creating alternatives to water almost from the very beginning. We take the availability of fresh, clean water for granted in the Western world. However one of the first things that happened when we started settling into semi-permanent and permanent villages was water contamination. This led to immediate problems. 

For all the legitimate issues in the modern world with alcohol, it did render water safe to drink in ancient time. So beer, wine, and other ferments were one of the first achievements of human development that allowed for large human settlements and ultimately birthed civilization. 

Standage moves from beer in ancient Mesopotamia and wine in Greece, through distilled liquors that fueled European exploration. Fun fact: distillation was perfected in the Arabic countries for use in creating perfumes. Who knew?

From the alcoholic beverages, Standage moves to coffee, tea, and soda. Thanks to college class on Bach, I was already familiar with much of the material in the coffee chapter. It was still a good overview and added information about the coffee houses in England and the rest of Europe. In fact, coffee was tightly involved with scientific development and the exchange of ideas in many areas. 

Tea pretty much funded the British Empire for about a decade. Soda was, it turns out, tied strongly to the idea of American capitalism and patriotism. So, all in all, a really interesting read.