Here are 98 books that The Search for God and Guinness fans have personally recommended if you like
The Search for God and Guinness.
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I became interested in bar culture in my 20s when I worked at a neighborhood "local" in Toronto and was struck by how close people could become when sharing drinks and stories across a bar. Since then, I’ve spent most of my life researching the history of cocktails and bars—both as an academic topic and as a columnist for magazines and newspapers, including the Toronto Star. I’ve written a podcast on Prohibition for Wondery Media, as well as four books, Mondo Cocktail, America Walks Into a Bar,Canadian Spirits (with Stephen Beaumont), and the forthcoming Cocktails: A Still Life (Running Press), with James Waller and still-life artist Todd M. Casey.
Although I loved the city of New York more than ever after 9/11, it was sometimes hard to feel optimism and hope about the bigger picture and humanity as a whole in the first several years of the new millennium. This book was one of several things that helped restore my faith, since Moehringer so lovingly portrays the community where he grew up in Long Island—an area profoundly impacted by the attack on the World Trade Center. While I was fact-checking the title, et cetera, I discovered there’s a movie version coming out in early 2022. Obviously I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m really looking forward to it.
**Now a major film directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck**
'Highly entertaining . . . constructed as skilfully as a drink mixed by the author's Uncle Charlie' New York Times
In the rich tradition of bestselling memoirs about self-invention, The Tender Bar is by turns riveting, moving, and achingly funny. An evocative portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, it's also a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys.
JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a DJ who disappeared before JR spoke his first words. As…
As a commercial sociologist who studies drinking cultures by day and a cocktail lover who partakes in those same cultures by night, I have always been fascinated with the rituals and traditions of hospitality. As a child, my parents disliked taking me to restaurants because my attention would always be focused on the other diners rather than whatever was on my plate. Academically, I am fascinated by the social construction of fact and how the documentation of what we understand to be true in science or history can be heavily influenced by such factors as class, gender, and race. It’s putting these two interests together that led me to research and ultimately write a book on how women have been systematically excluded from the historical record of the cocktail.
If there were a single riposte to the cliché that men inherently know more about booze than women, then Girly Drinks by Mallory O’Meara would be it.
Mallory is neither a drinks journalist nor a professional bartender, but she is an unstoppable force on a mission to set the record straight about women and booze. Going deep into women’s history while simultaneously reflecting on her own experiences with alcohol, she takes us on a whistle-stop tour across the ages and around the world.
Her style is witty, assertive, and just the right side of combative. I couldn’t help but fist bump the air in solidarity as she dispels myth after myth about the so-called girly drink.
This is the forgotten history of women making, serving and drinking alcohol. Drink has always been at the centre of social rituals and cultures worldwide-and women have been at the heart of its production and consumption. So when did drinking become gendered? How have patriarchies tried to erase and exclude women from industries they've always led, and how have women fought back? And why are things from bars to whiskey considered 'masculine', when, without women, they might not exist?
With whip-smart insight and boundless curiosity, Girly…
I'm an award-winning travel and drinks writer and have worked for National Geographic, The Times, BBC Travel, American Express, AAA, Waitrose Drinks, and many more. My love of spirits and travel led to me starting the Travel Distilled website and I'm the author of Cask Strength, which tells the story of the barrel, and of the travel guides Islay Distilled and Cognac Distilled. I've visited numerous distilleries in the UK, Ireland, USA, France, Greece, Iceland, Sweden, Mexico, and elsewhere. I was persuaded to try drinking vodka for breakfast while touring Siberia. It seemed a good idea at the time but it's not a habit I've kept up.
I love books that delve deep into seemingly small topics, like the best-sellers Cod and Salt, on subjects we take for granted.
The author, who has written several history books, here chooses six beverages through which he does indeed tell a history of the world, by linking each beverage to a time period. Only one is spirits, the others being beer, wine, tea, coffee, and Coca-Cola.
Again it's aimed at the general reader, not the specialist, and is an entertaining journey down the centuries. It zips along and is packed with those quirky 'I never knew that' facts.
“There aren’t many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history.” ―Los Angeles Times
Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage’s deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just ways to quench thirst. They also represent six eras that span the course of civilization―from the adoption of agriculture, to the birth of cities, to the advent of globalization. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age…
I became interested in bar culture in my 20s when I worked at a neighborhood "local" in Toronto and was struck by how close people could become when sharing drinks and stories across a bar. Since then, I’ve spent most of my life researching the history of cocktails and bars—both as an academic topic and as a columnist for magazines and newspapers, including the Toronto Star. I’ve written a podcast on Prohibition for Wondery Media, as well as four books, Mondo Cocktail, America Walks Into a Bar,Canadian Spirits (with Stephen Beaumont), and the forthcoming Cocktails: A Still Life (Running Press), with James Waller and still-life artist Todd M. Casey.
You know how, when you read a book that’s so clever, funny, and perfectly written you want to actually get to know the author? That’s what happened to me when I read this book. Even though I didn’t know him, I knew he’d be the kind of person that you hoped to run into at the bar—a generous man with a great sense of humor, a bright outlook, and plenty of great stories.
We did eventually come to be friends in real life, too. It turned out that we’re practically neighbors and both enjoy the occasional glass of gin. True story.
First published in 2001 to national acclaim, Notes on a Beermat is Nicholas Pashley’s ode to the amber nectar of the gods, a witty meditation on beer and everything that goes with it―from socializing to the solitary pleasures of a beer and a book, to the qualities necessary in a good pub. Most books about beer focus on the beverage itself, how to make it and how to buy it. Notes on a Beermat, the only Canadian book of its kind, explains how to drink beer and why it is absolutely necessary. With characteristic wit and charm, Pashley observes, for…
I was that child who always took things apart to see how they worked. I was always interested in new gizmos and technology, but found myself most drawn to raw materials – how does this make that, and how can I make that better? Eventually, this led me to engineering school and the aerospace industry. Along the way, I got interested in beer and asked, “why didn’t this work?” That question, vehemently directed at my first batch of homebrew, lead to the first edition of How to Brew. Thirty-something years later, I'm the Chief Editor for the Master Brewers Association – an international professional organization for brewers founded in Chicago in 1887.
Now that you better understand what beer is and where (and who) it comes from, it is interesting to learn more about how beer shaped the growth of the United States of America. Ambitious Brew is the story of beer in America: from the early days of the German Beer Gardens in the mid-1800’s to the rise to dominance of American Adjunct Lager beer and brewing prowess by 1900, to the dark days of Prohibition, and afterward; Maureen unveils the people and events that shaped this country. This book has long been one of my favorites, it helped me understand that people are the key – that behind every great beer are great people who often overcame great struggles to make it so.
In the first-ever history of American beer, Maureen Ogle tells its epic story, from the immigrants who invented it to the upstart microbrewers who revived it. Beer might seem as American as baseball, but that has not always been true: Rum and whiskey were the drinks of choice in the 1840s, with only a few breweries making heavy, yeasty English ale. When a wave of German immigrants arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they promptly set about re-creating the pleasures of the biergartens they had left behind.
Just fifty years later, the American-style lager beer they invented was…
I started my scientific career as an Astrophysicist. However, I have always been interested in Archaeology. This finally led me to conjugate the two passions when I started working in Archaeoastronomy, in 2003. Working in Archaeoastronomy first means having a direct experience of the sites (preferably, of every single stone, although in places like Giza they count in the millions…). So I have made fieldworks in Italy, Egypt, Cambodia, and, recently, on Chinese imperial necropolises. I currently teach Archaeoastronomy as a professor at the Politecnico of Milan. I have always been interested also in scientific communication on TV and social media, and my introductive Archaeoastronomy course is available for free on the Coursera platform.
Modern Archaeoastronomy was born with the pioneering (and controversial) studies of Gerald Hawkins at Stonehenge and Alexander Thom on the megalithic monuments in Britain and Brittany. This book – although a bit dated with respect to recent research on some sites – remains a milestone to settle the point on debated issues. The technical points are treated in boxes so that the book is readable by the general public.
Do prehistoric stone monuments in Britain and Ireland incorporate deliberate astronomical alignments, and if so, what is their purpose and meaning? This work provides an account of megalithic astronomy debates and examines prehistoric man's concern with celestial bodies and events.
I am the author of two books on distilled spirits and have been blogging at AlcoholReviews.com since 1998. I have written about drinks, drinks history, and drinks politics for the New York Times and the American Spectator magazine. Whiskey is my favorite distilled spirit—there are so many fantastic types and brands of it. For consumers, it can be really bewildering to navigate. So, I take it as my duty to help people navigate the wide and wild world of whiskey!
At the end of the 19th century, Ireland made more whiskey than any other nation. Then came an economic downturn, political trouble, and Prohibition, which devastated the country’s storied whiskey industry. Until recently, only a handful of Irish distilleries remained. Not any more—Irish whiskey is roaring, with new, small producers (like Teeling) joining the likes of the hulking, ancient producers (like Midleton). Muldoon and his colleagues share with readers a bit of the old and new on Irish whiskey. From Barley to Blarney is structured like a travelogue, with chapters devoted to the provinces where Irish whiskey is made, and its colorful coverage may induce the reader to book a flight to the Emerald Island.
From medieval monks to recent renaissance, From Barley to Blarney: A Whiskey Lover's Guide to Ireland includes everything you need to understand, appreciate, and mix one of the world's fastest-growing (and most delicious!) spirits.
An Irish whiskey guru, two bartender behemoths, and an adept writer combine forces to create this comprehensive guide to Irish whiskey. The book begins with an in-depth introduction to whiskey and its history in Ireland, including what makes the style of Irish whiskey unique. What follows is a detailed examination of 50 different Irish whiskeys and the distilleries that make them, as well as a discussion…
I spent the majority of my twenties living and working abroad, and I've always been a sucker for a love story that crosses borders. I met my husband while living and working in Turkey, and now I write lighthearted romance novels inspired by the idea that you don't have to choose between catching flights or catching feelings - why not both? While I'm doing less traveling these days, I feel like I still get to experience different countries, cultures, and settings thanks to so many wonderful books that feel like vacations.
I see the phrase "roadtrip across Ireland," and it's an immediate "yes" for me.
There was so much that I loved about this story—the adventurous main characters and the shenanigans they get themselves into, an animal sidekick, and of course the setting. There were some parts near the end that made me a little teary-eyed, but in a beautiful and cathartic kind of way. I think it's time for a reread!
Carla Black's life motto is "here for a good time, not for a long time." She's been traveling the world on her own in her vintage Jeep Wrangler for nearly a decade, stopping only long enough to replenish her adventure fund. She doesn't do love and she doesn't ever go home.
Eamon Sullivan is a modern-day cartographer who creates digital maps. His work helps people find their way, but he's the one who's lost his sense of direction. He's unhappy at work, recently dumped, and his one big dream is stalled out-literally.
In my poetry, stories, novels, and scripts, I have long been drawn to the workings of chance: how it can charm characters by the opportunities it appears to offer; how it can turn attractive prospects inside out; and how it can so often force characters to confront realities which, perhaps for a long time, they have sought to avoid. Through different genres—science fiction, mainstream literary, lyric poetry, and realistic drama—I have, over the years, explored the notion of the fork in the road. Will a character choose their path wisely? Will they choose foolishly but press on against all odds? In literature, in lfe, such questions are crucial.
Spanning the decades between the 1920s and 1980s, this is the story of the Quintons of Kilneagh, County Cork, Protestant mill-owners but supporters of the Irish independence cause; of the revenge taken on them by the Black and Tans; and of its life-skewing consequences for the survivors of Kilneagh. The Quintons’ son, Willie, is confronted with an almost indescribable fork in the road: should he avenge the family for the Black and Tans’ atrocities? Or should he search his heart for forgiveness? His decision takes an enormous toll on his character, with ramifications for his ability to be truly close to any other human being, including his lover Marianne.
Penguin Classics is proud to welcome William Trevor—"Ireland’s answer to Chekhov" (The Boston Globe) and "one of the best writers of our era" (The Washington Post)—to our distinguished list of literary masters. In this award-winning novel, an informer’s body is found on the estate of a wealthy Irish family shortly after the First World War, and an appalling cycle of revenge is set in motion. Led by a zealous sergeant, the Black and Tans set fire to the family home, and only young Willie and his mother escape alive. Fatherless, Willie grows into manhood while his alcoholic mother’s bitter resentment…
I have been a student of Druidry since the mid-1990s and I have also had a passion for history and mythology since I received a children’s version of “The Twelve Labours of Hercules” when I was around 7 years old. I’ve read pretty much all the major stories and texts in relation to Celtic myth and Druid lore (particularly from Ireland), sometimes in multiple versions, so I think I have a fair idea of what is useful or worth reading.
There are newer versions of this book, often described as the “Illiad/Odyssey” of Irish tradition, but this is the classic translation from 1969.
Kinsella was a poet and a Gaeilgeoir (Irish speaker) so he really understood this text due to his deep knowledge of the source language and of Irish poetic norms, plus he spent 15 years lovingly translating it into the best English facsimile possible.
This is one of (if not the most) important myths of Ireland and is an essential read for those interested in Irish mythology.
The Tain Bo Cuailnge, centre-piece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's greatest epic. It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cuailnge. The hero of the tale is Cuchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, who resists the invaders single-handed while Ulster's warriors lie sick.
Thomas Kinsella presents a complete and living version of the story. His translation is based on the partial texts in two medieval manuscripts, with elements…
