Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol
Don't look now, but there's another booze-related book on the shelves, and this one's got a slightly different spin than a lot of the others we've read. We love to read about booze, and instead of dry paragraphs about how liquors are made, this one focuses on the cultural impact of fermented grain and grape.
From absinthe to Jay-Z's boycott of allegedly racist Cristal, from Mayan pulque to Pilsner Urquell, he covers the history and the culture of the medicinal and mind-altering product that since at least 8000 B.C. has been part of human civilization. The book's first chapters chronicle the history of fermentation and distillation from early civilization through the late Middle Ages, before the narrative's bulk gives over to alcohol's story since the colonization of the New World.
Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol
[via Washington Post]
Read More in: Drinking Advice
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Posted by Liquor Snob at July 29, 2008 9:02 AM
The simplest and most commonly used alcohols are methanol and ethanol. Methanol was formerly obtained by the distillation of wood and called "wood alcohol." Two other alcohols whose uses are relatively widespread (though not so much as those of methanol and ethanol) are propanol and butanol. Like ethanol, they can be produced by fermentation processes.
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Sam
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