Seventeen years ago the author of this work made his first trip abroad to gather material for a book on coffee. Subsequently he spent a year in travel among the coffee-producing countries. After the initial surveys, correspondents were appointed to make researches in the principal European libraries and museums; and this phase of the work continued until April, 1922. Simultaneous researches were conducted in American libraries and historical museums...

"Challenge yourself, challenge your friends. Or make it official and host a night of fun, enlightening, and hilarious trivia. The pub quiz is a cultural institution, and bartender Austin Rogers is singularly good at it, not only as the long-time host of a hugely popular New York City quiz night, but also as a 12-time Jeopardy! champion whose earnings of over $400,000 are the seventh highest in the show's history. He knows a whole of just about everything,...

William L. Hamilton loves a good gimlet. Rose's and lime. Straight up. Perfectly iced. Make the glass pretty too. "It ruined my reputation for thinking before I speak," he writes of that love. "I accept the trade-off." Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, when Hamilton sees it, he drinks it -- and tells the incredible tale. In "Shaken and Stirred," his biweekly Sunday Styles column, now an original book of his drinking adventures, the intrepid New York Times...

From an award-winning journalist and beer expert, a thoughtful and witty guide to understanding and enjoying beer Right here, right now is the best time in the history of mankind to be a beer drinker. America now has more breweries than at any time since prohibition, and globally, beer culture is thriving and constantly innovating. Drinkers can order beer brewed with local yeast or infused with moondust. However, beer drinkers are also faced with...

"No matter what country you clink glasses in, everyone has a word for cheers. In Cheers! Around the World in 80 Toasts, Brandon Cook takes readers on a whirlwind trip through languages from Estonian to Elvish and everywhere in between. Need to know how to toast in Tagalog? Say bottoms up in Basque? Down the hatch in Hungarian? Cook teaches readers how to toast in 80 languages and includes drinking traditions, historical facts, and strange linguistic...

La Fee Verte (or "The Green Fairy") has intoxicated artists, poets, and writers ever since the late eighteenth century. Stories abound of absinthe's druglike sensations of mood lift and inspiration due to the presence of wormwood, its infamous "special" ingredient, which ultimately leads to delirium, homicidal mania, and death. Opening with the sensational 1905 Absinthe Murders, Phil Baker offers a cultural history of absinthe, from its modest origins...

While to us tea is an everyday commodity, in Austen's time it was relatively expensive, and to be able to offer it to visitors implied some degree of social status. This book examines the social customs of the time, and includes recipes.