Humans have had a complicated history with wine for thousands of years. It has been a banal item in the daily diet and treated as a liquid treasure. It has been venerated as a gift from the gods and cursed as threat to social order. It has been considered healthy to drink as well as hazardous to health. In 9000 Years of Wine, Rod Phillips surveys this long story and places wine in the broad sweep of history. He shows how it has been linked to big social, cultural, and economic swings, how ...

A sweeping and fascinating history of cat-human relationships.For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them became pets. In Cats, Rod Phillips shares a sweeping cultural and social history of felines, tracing their shifting place across societies and centuries, from ancient Egypt's revered hunters to Europe's suspected familiars of witches and from shipboard rode...

Whether as wine, beer, or spirits, alcohol has had a constant and often controversial role in social life. In his innovative book on the attitudes toward and consumption of alcohol, Rod Phillips surveys a 9,000-year cultural and economic history, uncovering the tensions between alcoholic drinks as healthy staples of daily diets and as objects of social, political, and religious anxiety. In the urban centers of Europe and America, where it was seen as healthier than untreated water, alcohol...

Wine: A social and cultural history of the drink that changed our lives is a wine history with a difference. Most histories of wine (like Hugh Johnson’s The Story of Wine, Paul Lukacs’s Inventing Wine, and Rod Phillips’s own A Short History of Wine) are chronological narratives that begin with wine in the ancient world and run through to modern times. Wine has been seen typically as the subject of broader historical trends and events – how, for example, economic and diplomatic conditions f...

"A fascinating book that belongs on every wine lover’s bookshelf."—The Wine Economist"It’s a book to read for its unstoppable torrent of fascinating and often surprising details."—Andrew Jefford, DecanterFor centuries, wine has been associated with France more than with any other country. France remains one of the world’s leading wine producers by volume and enjoys unrivaled cultural recognition for its wine. If any wine r...

Overwhelmed when you walk into the local wine store?Just trying to find that special gift for that special occasion?Looking for the perfect pairing for tonight's dinner?Or are you just tired of the same ol' same ol'?Let Rod Phillips, Canada's trusted wine expert, show you the way. With over 500 domestic and international wines categorized by vintage, appellation, alcohol content, price range, taste description — and Phillips' authoritative quality ratings syste...

Wine has been made commercially in Canada since the mid-1800s but Canadian wine has only really begun to register with professionals and consumers outside the country in the last few decades, as quality has dramatically improved. Canadian wine is now being exported in meaningful volumes to the USA, Asia and Europe and since the beginning of this century the number of wineries has increased more than 250 per cent. In recent years wine regions have been demarcated (with some divided into sub...

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film...

Canadian environmental law is a dynamic and exciting area that is playing an increasingly important role in furthering sustainable development policy. Environmental law has distinctive relevant principles, operating procedures, implications, and importance in comparison with other areas of law, and these distinctions must be appreciated both within the legal community and by all those who are concerned with the way that courts handle environmental cases. Environment in the Courtroom provid...

Home of the first settlement in the United States and known as Old Dominion and The Mother of Presidents, the state of Virginia’s artistic output proves among the most fecund in the nation, evidenced in this ninth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. This collection includes well-known, established, and celebrated poets such as Charles Wright, Claudia Emerson, Gregory Orr, Ellen Bryant Voigt, R. T. Smith, Forrest Gander, and Rita Dove, and the editors have dedicated equal focu...

Every man has been a Rod Grasper. We all know the pain, the torment, of having our beautiful gothic model wife stolen by handsome space lizards with their thick, ribbed tails and lazer guns. In this erotica / comedy, Rod Grasper blasts a hole in the side of the starship of the human mind and then flies out of it, before flying in again. He describes lovemaking in the same way those expensive supermarkets describe lettuce.And that's because Rod Grasper knows love, and he knows his w...