Recommended Reading: Man Walks Into A Pub

Well, this will be a dramatically different kind of book recommendation from the last one. (Although I guess there is a tenuous sequitor, since Jeff Ford has been known to enjoy a beer.)

I also wanted to take a moment to recommend to everyone the book that is currently my downstairs bathroom book: Pete Brown’s Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History Of Beer Drinking.

Wow, is this a fun book. It is, as the title suggests, a history of beer drinking in Britain, and of all the things related thereto, specifically including the development of pub culture. It’s written in a breezy, discursive style that I find particularly readable, and I think I’ve been smiling at least once on most of the pages. There’s lots of footnoting and quoting (at least in the parts I read through so far) but this never makes things dry–indeed, quite a lot of the fun comes from seeing some of the quotes, or how Brown places their central ideas in the context of the ongoing flow of history.

There is a web site dedicated to the book where you will find a description of the book that includes this bit:

It tells the history of beer and pubs in Britain; of beer’s hallowed roots as a gift from the gods to cheer us up, through to the last pint of Stella on a Friday night. And how the front room of a house with a big stick above the door evolved into gin palaces, working men’s clubs and gastropubs.

It’s a story that features a whole host of unlikely characters, including an Egyptian Goddess, John Noakes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a Canadian bloke who invented toasters, a couple of goats, Louis Pasteur, obsessive monks, a bear in a yellow nylon jacket, and some spitfires.

You can also find, some pub jokes, and many other things. My favourite thing about the web site is the truly epic list of words that can be used to convey the concept of being drunk. The book listed 120 such words; the list at the site has… um… quite a lot more than that.

If you want to see a few reviews, there’s one at the Guardian, and another at the Gen X at 40 blog. The later includes some comments that may force me to buy another beer history book.