A Short History of Wine - Softcover

Phillips, Rod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060937378 ISBN 13: 9780060937379

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2002

Synopsis

Filled with riveting stories and profound insights, an entertaining guide to the world of wine travels the world, recreating each of the wonderful eras of wine consumption, with their varied values and palates, and detailing the anbundance of wine that has been consumed and enjoyed. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Rod Phillips has studied in Canada, New Zealand, and England. He is professor of history at Carlton University, Ottawa, where he teaches courses on the history of alcohol, the family, and French society. He has held fellowships in several countries, and his books have been widely translated.

From Publishers Weekly:

The consummate companion to any good glass of wine, this engaging book delves into the robust history of the beverage and investigates its vitality as what Phillips calls "a product, a commodity and an icon." An opening anecdote regarding the cancellation of a recent Iranian state visit to France (the French demanded dinner wine; Muslim law forbids alcohol consumption) perfectly frames both the range of cultural dispositions toward wine and the complex role it has played on the stage of world history. Investigating archeological and botanical evidence, Phillips, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, travels 7,000 years into the past to uncover the historical roots of wine-production and, by detailing the earliest bacchanals and trade routes through which wine entered public life and value systems, he investigates the role of wine as a commodity. In addition to studying the shifting economic and cultural importance of wine throughout history, Phillips also closely analyzes the effects of alcoholism and drink-induced violence. Wine, he poetically suggests, can be both a yield of the gods and the fruit of the devil, a commodity that paradoxically crosses borders while establishing lines between classes, and a product "of society more than of nature." Phillips's work wonderfully reveals all the histories readers might only have guessed at while thumbing through Chaucer, Boccaccio or Rimbaud, and his book provides a comprehensive reading of Western civilization through the bell of a wine glass.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0060937378
• ISBN 13: 9780060937379
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400