I will go on to explaining the inside of the book , Liquid Pleasures.
This book is not, strictly speaking, written in chapters.
You could say this book consists of 8 major parts.
1: The history of drinking water in England
2: The relationships of Milk and England
3: Tea and sugar consumption in England
4: Percentage of coffee drinkers
5: Soft drinks and young people
6: Numbers of brewers in England and Wales
7: Beer consumption in the UK in the 19th century
8: Frequency of drinking spirits
(These are not names of the chapters. I put names to them to make it easier to look at)
As you can see this book mainly focuses it's target on the modern history of drinks in England. Starting from water, it goes on to milk, tea, coffee, soft drinks, breweries in England, beer, spirits. In the chapters of coffee and tea, it shows detailed figures of household consumption of them. Not only that, but in almost every part of this book, there are numerals, graphs, and figures. As I said in my previous blogs, personally I would have preferred the author to have used less figures and more concrete examples.
This is a short movie about a man who is visiting England ( probably from America) He clearly states that he is now addicted to tea.
Though he only mentions about tea near the beginning of the movie, it is enough to give us the impression that English people absolutely love tea.
This is a unique book in that it deals with a wide variety of beverages--from water to milk and spirits--rather than concentrating on one sort of beverage in depth, like coffee or beer. Most books on beverages take the latter approach. It's fascinating that a certain period in British history, the late seventeenth century, had a "hot beverage revolution" and the late 20th century had a "cold beverage revolution." That there would be such preferences not just with individuals but with entire populations is interesting. I suppose the fact that one of the authors is a professor made the book more full of detailed figures.
返信削除I'm glad that you gave us an idea of how the book is organised even though it doesn't seem to have had clear chapter divisions.
It's a relief to see that you have finally started posting messages on your blog. I was becoming deeply worried about your fate.