Monday, October 12, 2009

"The Search for God and Guinness:A Biography of the Beer the Changed the World" by Stephen Mansfield


The Search for God and Guinness Stephen Mansfield gives the background history of how beer came into being and how it came to be brewed along with it’s importance to cultivating established civilizations. He also traces the Guinness family for over 200 years from the first Guinness to begin the brewery to the last one who stepped aside to allow the company to become a more public entity. Within the family he traces those who stayed with the family business, those who went into banking and those who entered ministry. Along with the history of the family he also covers what else was happening in Ireland and the rest of the world during those times.

I enjoyed learning more about how beer was discovered, experimented with and brewed and how it may have helped encourage people to settle down into cities so they could stay in one place to cultivate crops. I learned a lot about Ireland, beer and the Guinness family (I didn’t realize the Guinness book of World Records was started by the Guinness family). I did however feel that there was more repetition than necessary in some of the sections and some sort of family tree would have been helpful since so many of the same family names were reused generation after generation.

http://brb.thomasnelson.com/

2 comments:

  1. That looks really neat! I have a Travel Channel and Food Network addiction, and I'd "watch" this book on there if it were a special...so I should read something like it! I love history and stuff about culture, but interesting, lesser-known things. Cool recommendation!

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  2. Chris is currently reading it, but you are welcome to it when he's done with it. I got it as part of Thomas Nelson blogger book review progam. If you have a book blog and agree to review the book you get it for free and once you post your review you can select another from what they have available. This was my first one but I got the second one in the mail today. The button to sign up is at the bottom of my page (In case anyone else is interested!).

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