One of Smithsonian Magazine’s Ten Best Books of the Year about FoodA Forbes Best Booze Book of the YearInterweaving archaeology and science, Patrick E. McGovern tells the enthralling story of the world’s oldest alcoholic beverages and the cultures that created them. Humans invented heady concoctions, experimenting with fruits, honey, cereals, tree resins, botanicals, and more. These “liquid time capsules” carried social, medicinal, and reli...

In a lively gastronomical tour around the world and through the millennia, Uncorking the Past tells the compelling story of humanity's ingenious, intoxicating search for booze. Following a tantalizing trail of archaeological, chemical, artistic, and textual clues, Patrick E. McGovern, the leading authority on ancient alcoholic beverages, brings us up to date on what we now know about the creation and history of alcohol, and the role of alcohol in society across cultures. Along the...

This volume presents contemporary evidence scientific, archaeological, botanical, textual, and historical for major revisions in our understanding of winemaking in antiquity. Among the subjects covered are the domestication of the Vinifera grape, the wine trade, the iconography of ancient wine, and the analytical and archaeological challenges posed by ancient wines. The essayists argue that wine existed as long ago as 3500 BC, almost half a millennium earlier than experts believed...

A richly illustrated account of the story of ancient vinicultureThe history of civilization is, in many ways, the history of wine. This book is the first comprehensive account of the earliest stages of the history and prehistory of viniculture, which extends back into the Neolithic period and beyond. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Ancient Wine opens up whole new chapters in the fascinating story of wine by drawing on recent archaeological discov...

Patrick E. McGovern takes us on a fascinating journey through time to the dawn of brewing when our ancestors might well have made a Palaeo-Brew of wild fruits, honey, cereals, and botanicals. Early beverage-makers must have marveled at the magical process of fermentation. Their amazement grew as they drank the mind-altering drinks, which were to become the medicines, religious symbols, and social lubricants of later cultures.McGovern recounts how the re-created Ancient Ales and Spi...

Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus, Antony: the names still resonate across thousands of years. Major figures in the civil wars that brutally ended the Roman republic, their lives pose a question that haunts us still: how to safeguard a republic from the flaws of its leaders.This edition of Plutarch delivers a fresh translation of notable clarity, explanatory notes, and ample historical context.

A revelatory account by the bestselling author of Ratf**ked that will give you hope that America's fragile democracy can still be saved.Following Ratf**ked, his “extraordinary timely and undeniably important” (New York Times Book Review) exposé of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation’s leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant ...

We are living in a time when behavioral change is necessary for our health and survival. Yet we find it exceedingly difficult to transform our own habits, let alone those of other people. Enter Naohiro Matsumura, whose powerful new design method is as astonishingly simple in its logic as it is sophisticated in its psychology. It allows any of us to address challenges in our homes, our public spaces, and our social interactions.As Matsumura shows, a shikake—or "device" in J...

A history with sweeping implications, American Messiahs challenges our previous misconceptions about "cult" leaders and their messianic power.Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed a...

By captivating millions during his six-year, fifty-country tenure as the New York Times's "Frugal Traveler," Seth Kugel has become one of our most internationally beloved travel writers. While his famously unassuming journeys around the globe have forged a signature philosophy of whimsy and practicality, they have also revealed the seemingly infinite booby traps of on-the-grid tourism. In a book with widespread cultural reverberations, Kugel takes the modern travel industry to tas...

The term "home economics" may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today.In the surprising, often fiercely feminist, and always fascinating The Secret Hi...

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of thirty-one men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before...