10 books like Uncorking the Past

By Patrick E. McGovern,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like Uncorking the Past. Shepherd is a community of 7,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper

By Fuchsia Dunlop,

Book cover of Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

In China there’s an expression that roughly translates, “It’s not a meal without alcohol.” The converse is equally true: Chinese alcohol yearns to be paired with food. This list would thus be incomplete without a book that seriously delves into Chinese food culture. And in many ways, my own journey into Chinese spirits was an unintentional compliment to Dunlop’s earlier book. We both learned from local experts, followed our respective passions around China, and spent the bulk of our time in the idyllic Sichuanese capital of Chengdu. I especially appreciate Dunlop’s willingness to explore uncomfortable cultural dissonances, and the compelling and poignant case she makes for overcoming them.

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper

By Fuchsia Dunlop,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Award-winning food writer Fuchsia Dunlop went to live in China as a student in 1994, and from the very beginning she vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien and bizarre it seemed. In this extraordinary memoir, Fuchsia recalls her evolving relationship with China and its food, from her first rapturous encounter with the delicious cuisine of Sichuan Province to brushes with corruption, environmental degradation, and greed. In the course of her fascinating journey, Fuchsia undergoes an apprenticeship at China's premier Sichuan cooking school, where she is the only foreign student in a class of nearly fifty…


The Banished Immortal

By Ha Jin,

Book cover of The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)

Li Bai is the best known of China’s “Eight Immortals of the Wine Glass,” a group of Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) poets famous for their drinking prowess. Using historical records, Ha Jin’s biography is a portrait of a frustrated half-Chinese outcast, brilliant but arrogant, who struggles to find a place in a world where talent alone is not enough. Brought down to earth, Li the man is less inspiring than the legend but far more sympathetic.

The Banished Immortal

By Ha Jin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Banished Immortal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In his own time (701–762), Li Bai’s brilliant poems—shaped by Daoist thought, filled with an irrepressible lust for life—were never given their proper due. Nonetheless, his lines rang out on the lips of tavern singers, soldiers, and writers throughout the Tang dynasty, and his deep desire for a higher, more perfect world gave rise to his nickname: the Banished Immortal. With the instincts of a master novelist, Ha Jin draws on a wide range of historical and literary sources to weave the great poet’s life story, following Bai from his origins on the western frontier to his rambling travels as…


Science and Civilisation in China

By H.T. Huang,

Book cover of Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 5, Fermentations and Food Science

During the height of the Second World War, British biochemist Joseph Needham traveled across China with his assistant H.T. Huang to study Chinese scientific development, braving breakthroughs, and Japanese incursion along the way. Needham spent the next half-century compiling his findings into the Science and Civilization in China series, which rewrote our understanding of China’s place in world history. The story of its creation, and the colorful characters behind it, is memorably told in Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China, a book that sadly had little to tell us about Chinese drinks. This volume, however, written by Huang, is the urtext for understanding the development of Chinese alcoholic beverages.

Science and Civilisation in China

By H.T. Huang,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Science and Civilisation in China as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Today Chinese cuisine is enjoyed in many parts of the world, yet little is known in the West about the technologies involved in making its characteristic ingredients. H. T. Huang's book is the first history of Chinese food technology in a western language. It describes the conversion of agricultural commodities into food and drink, and explores the origins, development and scientific basis of traditional Chinese technology as applied to the processing of four food categories: the fermentation of alcoholic drinks from grains; the conversion of soybeans into soyfoods and condiments; the preservation of foods and the production of noodles, vegetable…


Soju

By Hyunhee Park,

Book cover of Soju: A Global History

A book about Korean liquor might seem out of place on this list, but hear me out. Park’s book tells the story of soju from an unusual perspective, explaining Korean distilled spirits’ origins and development in terms of the historical circumstances that created them. It explores Korea’s place in the ancient world to explain when the country first encountered and widely adopted distilled spirits, a task that necessitates a sustained gaze on China. Accordingly, Soju provides readers with the most detailed examination of ancient Chinese liquor since H.T. Huang’s, and provides several noteworthy updates and improvements on his work.

Soju

By Hyunhee Park,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Soju as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hyunhee Park offers the first global historical study of soju, the distinctive distilled drink of Korea. Searching for soju's origins, Park leads us into the vast, complex world of premodern Eurasia. She demonstrates how the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wove together hemispheric flows of trade, empire, scientific and technological transfer and created the conditions for the development of a singularly Korean drink. Soju's rise in Korea marked the evolution of a new material culture through ongoing interactions between the global and local and between tradition and innovation in the adaptation and localization of new technologies. Park's…


Drink

By Iain Gately,

Book cover of Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol

People have been making and drinking alcoholic beverages for as long as the technology has been around that allows them to do so – some 8,000 years, as it turns out. In this glorious gallop through the long and varied history – or, rather, multifarious histories – of beer, wine, and spirits around the world, packed with odd facts that will make you a champ at any booze trivia quiz, Iain Gately entertainingly shows how tightly intertwined the various forms of alcoholic beverages have been over the centuries with the societies that produce them, and how our western love/hate relationship with the demon alcohol has evolved.

Drink

By Iain Gately,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Drink as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A spirited look at the history of alcohol, from the dawn of civilization to the modern day

Alcohol is a fundamental part of Western culture. We have been drinking as long as we have been human, and for better or worse, alcohol has shaped our civilization. Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to the present day.

Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, the Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, the slave trade, and…


Everyday Drinking

By Kingsley Amis,

Book cover of Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis

The first book I read by British novelist Kingsley Amis was Lucky Jim, one of the greatest satires on academic life ever written (I do not, however, recommend reading it when you are applying for a teaching position as I foolishly did, since it will mess, mess, mess with your head). Amis enjoyed the drink far more than he should have, earning him the reputation, as he put it, “of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.” His extensive familiarity with the bottom of a glass bore at least one good fruit. Everyday Drinking is a painfully witty, laugh-out-loud collection of essays and even quizzes on different kinds of alcohol from around the world. 

Everyday Drinking

By Kingsley Amis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Everyday Drinking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Kingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing. This new volume brings together the best of his three out-of-print works on the subject: Kingsley Amis in Drink, Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass? In one handsome package, the book covers a full shelf of the master's riotous and erudite thoughts on the drinking arts: Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) are Amis's musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man's Diet, The Mean Sod's Guide, and…


¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico

By Marie Sarita Gaytán,

Book cover of ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico

One of the great pleasures of researching the history of alcohol in Mexico was learning how much more to tequila there was – both in taste and in history – than shot glasses, salt and lime. This book gives a fascinating account of participant observation in tequila distillery tours, tasting events, and a five-month Tequila Studies diploma program at the University of Guadalajara, alongside analysis of tequila’s representation in newspapers, novels, popular songs, and films. The illustrations Gaytán has included to demonstrate tequila’s role in the construction of Mexicanness – images of tequila bottles, labels, and other promotional materials, stills from movies, photographs of tequila-based tourist attractions – are particularly illuminating. 

¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico

By Marie Sarita Gaytán,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Italy has grappa, Russia has vodka, Jamaica has rum. Around the world, certain drinks-especially those of the intoxicating kind-are synonymous with their peoples and cultures. For Mexico, this drink is tequila. For many, tequila can conjure up scenes of body shots on Cancun bars and coolly garnished margaritas on sandy beaches. Its power is equally strong within Mexico, though there the drink is more often sipped rather than shot, enjoyed casually among friends, and used to commemorate occasions from the everyday to the sacred. Despite these competing images, tequila is universally regarded as an enduring symbol of lo mexicano.

!Tequila!…


Doctors and Distillers

By Camper English,

Book cover of Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails

A fun read that explores the surprising history of alcohol used to treat medical maladies, from the Carthusian monks creating herbal elixirs, to the invention of tonic water to cure malaria.

English winds though the various maladies like wounds to worms to snakebites, and all the questionable, but delicious prescriptions, from gin and tonics to bourbon whiskey.

Doctors and Distillers

By Camper English,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Doctors and Distillers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“At last, a definitive guide to the medicinal origins of every bottle behind the bar! This is the cocktail book of the year, if not the decade.” —Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants

“A fascinating book that makes a brilliant historical case for what I’ve been saying all along: alcohol is good for you…okay maybe it’s not technically good for you, but [English] shows that through most of human history, it’s sure beat the heck out of water.” —Alton Brown, creator of Good Eats

Beer-based wound care, deworming with wine, whiskey for snakebites, and medicinal mixers…


Alcohol in Latin America

By Gretchen Pierce (editor), Áurea Toxqui (editor),

Book cover of Alcohol in Latin America: A Social and Cultural History

As a historian of alcohol, I sometimes get asked why I study something so niche; this book shows that alcohol history is anything but! The ten scholars who have contributed to Alcohol in Latin America cover issues of commerce, taxation, regulation, and state-building; the formation and expression of different ethnic, gender, class, and national identities; and concepts of progress, modernity, tradition, and authenticity. They discuss these issues over more than five hundred years of history, with reference to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Andes, Guatemala, and Mexico, and by drawing on archaeological, anthropological, literary, and marketing studies. It is incredibly wide-ranging. As a wine-lover, I found the chapters by Nancy Hanway and Steve Stein tracing the development of the Argentine wine industry from the 1860s to the 1990s especially interesting. 

Alcohol in Latin America

By Gretchen Pierce (editor), Áurea Toxqui (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alcohol in Latin America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Aguardente, chicha, pulque, vino—no matter whether it’s distilled or fermented, alcohol either brings people together or pulls them apart. Alcohol in Latin America is a sweeping examination of the deep reasons why. This book takes an in-depth look at the social and cultural history of alcohol and its connection to larger processes in Latin America. Using a painting depicting a tavern as a metaphor, the authors explore the disparate groups and individuals imbibing as an introduction to their study. In so doing, they reveal how alcohol production, consumption, and regulation have been intertwined with the history of Latin America since…


Proof

By Adam Rogers,

Book cover of Proof: The Science of Booze

Any distiller, even a moonshiner, has to be a respectably good intuitive chemist; and as Adam Rogers shows in this very readable book, distilling is just the tip of the iceberg of the science that goes into producing the spirits we drink. There is science in the selection of ingredients for distilling – which include the yeasts that ferment the sugars in a huge variety of grains to produce the initial alcohol, the grains themselves, and, once the distilling is done, the aging and the addition of botanicals, if any. And then there is the science of understanding the effects of alcohol on the body, and particularly on the brain, although, sadly, Rogers can’t convincingly report the discovery of a sure-fire hangover cure.  

Proof

By Adam Rogers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Proof as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times bestseller, science journalist Adam Rogers's Proof is a spirited narrative on the fascinating art and science of alcohol, sure to inspire cocktail party chats on making booze, tasting it, and its effects on our bodies and brains, from "one of the best science writers around" (National Geographic).

Winner of Gourmand Award for Best Spirits Book
An IACP Cookbook Awards Winner
Finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Humans have been perfecting alcohol production for ten thousand years, but scientists are just starting to distill the chemical reactions behind the perfect buzz. In a…


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