(no subject)
gramarye1971 is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to history (well, and many other things too!) and so when she was here for a visit a few weeks ago I took shameless advantage of the opportunity to pump her for nonfiction recs. The first thing she mentioned was Tom Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses, which ended up being my airplane reading on the way to D*C.
The six glasses in question are beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, and cola; each beverage gets two chapters devoted to its development and its effects on culture and history, in a chronological fashion. It's pretty fascinating stuff, and convincing - my favorites may have been the first chapters on beer and its impact on the development of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, and the discussion of the coffeehouse clubs of the Enlightenment. (The Enlightenment is another one of those periods of history that I have been finding myself weirdly fascinated with of late. I blame Neal Stephenson.) Standage also does not shy away from depicting a lot of the highly unpleasant stuff going on in each period. It's good history, and well-researched, and I enjoyed reading it and learning the information that he presents.
That being said, I have one kind of enormous problem with the book: it bills itself as a history of the world, but it is completely and undeniably focused on the West. This is probably most blatant with coffee and tea, which show up in 'chronological order' as they impact Europe and America; Standage certainly acknowledges and describes their origins in other parts of the world, but only as a lead-in to showing how they impacted Western culture. The book is basically written from the perspective that things affect the West, which then affects everything else. Africa and Asia are presented pretty much entirely in terms of colonization, the slave trade, the Opium Wars, and while of course these are important things to talk about, there was stuff there before that. But that's not part of the scope of Standage's story.
Let me make this clear: I would not have a problem with this if the book was titled A History of Europe in Six Glasses or A History of Western Civilization in Six Glasses. But if you take on writing a History of the World, then I think it's kind of important to acknowledge that the world and the West are not equivalent.
The six glasses in question are beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, and cola; each beverage gets two chapters devoted to its development and its effects on culture and history, in a chronological fashion. It's pretty fascinating stuff, and convincing - my favorites may have been the first chapters on beer and its impact on the development of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, and the discussion of the coffeehouse clubs of the Enlightenment. (The Enlightenment is another one of those periods of history that I have been finding myself weirdly fascinated with of late. I blame Neal Stephenson.) Standage also does not shy away from depicting a lot of the highly unpleasant stuff going on in each period. It's good history, and well-researched, and I enjoyed reading it and learning the information that he presents.
That being said, I have one kind of enormous problem with the book: it bills itself as a history of the world, but it is completely and undeniably focused on the West. This is probably most blatant with coffee and tea, which show up in 'chronological order' as they impact Europe and America; Standage certainly acknowledges and describes their origins in other parts of the world, but only as a lead-in to showing how they impacted Western culture. The book is basically written from the perspective that things affect the West, which then affects everything else. Africa and Asia are presented pretty much entirely in terms of colonization, the slave trade, the Opium Wars, and while of course these are important things to talk about, there was stuff there before that. But that's not part of the scope of Standage's story.
Let me make this clear: I would not have a problem with this if the book was titled A History of Europe in Six Glasses or A History of Western Civilization in Six Glasses. But if you take on writing a History of the World, then I think it's kind of important to acknowledge that the world and the West are not equivalent.