Originally published under title: A short history of wine. London: Allen Lane, 2000.

"Humans have had a complicated history with wine for thousands of years. It has been a banal item in the daily diet and treated as a liquid treasure. It has been venerated as a gift from the gods and cursed as threat to social order. It has been considered healthy to drink as well as hazardous to health. In 9000 Years of Wine, Rod Phillips surveys this long story and places wine in the broad sweep of history. He shows how it has been linked to big social, cultural, and economic swings, how it has been caught up in wars and revolutions, and how it has had an impact on the lives of men and women for millennia."--Publisher.

Stone age wine -- The Noah hypothesis -- The archaeological and chemical hunt for the earliest wine -- Neolithic wine! -- Wine of the earliest pharaohs -- Wine of Egypt's golden age -- Wine of the world's first cities -- Wine and the great empires of the ancient Near East -- The Holy Land's bounty -- Lands of Dionysos : Greece and western Anatolia -- A beverage for King Midas and at the limits of the civilized world -- Molecular archaeology, wine, and a view to the future.

"Meticulously researched history…look[s] at how wine and Western civilization grew up together." —Dave McIntyre, Washington Post Because science and technology have opened new avenues for vintners, our taste in wine has grown ever more diverse. Wine is now the subject of careful chemistry and global demand. Paul Lukacs recounts the journey of wine through history—how wine acquired its social cachet, how vintners discovered the twin importance of place and grape, and how a basic need evolved into a realm of choice.

Naturalness is a hot topic in the wine world. But what exactly is a natural wine? For this book, best-selling wine writer Jamie Goode has teamed up with winemaker and Master of Wine Sam Harrop to explore the wide range of issues surrounding authenticity in wine. Sam Harrop initially trained as a winemaker in New Zealand.

"The history of wine is the history of civilization. It is the religious drink par excellence. In Greek mythology, references to wine abound. In the Bible, after the Flood, Noah plants a vineyard. In the Middle Ages, it was in the monasteries and churches that the syrupy drink of antiquity, unpalatable if not diluted, was transformed into the wine we know today. Wine expert Benoist Simmat and artist Daniel Casanave trace the story of wine from its origins in the Mediterranean to the globalized industry of the 21st century, spanning the innovations that have punctuated wine's long history, from oak-barrel aging to the invention of the bottle."--

In The Assassin's Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known participant in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government of the United States. Surratt, a Confederate sympathizer, ran the boarding house in Washington where the conspirators-including her rebel son, John Surratt-met to plan the assassination. When a military tribunal convicted her for her crimes and sentenced her to death, five of the nine commissioners petitioned President Andrew Johnson to show mercy on Surratt because of her sex and age. Unmoved, Johnson refused-Surratt, he said, "kept the nest that hatched the egg." Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, The Assassin's Accomplice tells the intricate story of the Lincoln conspiracy through the eyes of its only female participant. Based on long-lost interviews, confessions, and court testimony, the text explores how Mary's actions defied nineteenth-century norms of femininity, piety, and motherhood, leaving her vulnerable to deadly punishment historically reserved for men. A riveting narrative account of sex, espionage, and murder cloaked in the enchantments of Southern womanhood, The Assassin's Accomplice offers a fresh perspective on America's most famous murder.

"In this innovative book on the attitudes toward and consumption of alcohol, Rod Phillips surveys a 9,000-year cultural and economic history, uncovering the tensions between alcoholic drinks as healthy staples of daily diets and as objects of social, political, and religious anxiety. In the urban centers of Europe and America, where it was seen as healthier than untreated water, alcohol gained a foothold as the drink of choice, but it has been regulated by governmental and religious authorities more than any other commodity. As a potential source of social disruption, alcohol created volatile boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable consumption and broke through barriers of class, race, and gender. Phillips follows the ever-changing cultural meanings of these potent potables and makes the surprising argument that some societies have entered "post-alcohol" phases."--Jacket.

Do you enjoy fine wine? Can you name the different varieties of grape and the wines that are made from them? Are you an expert on all aspects of the wine making process? If so, find out how much you really know about wine with the 500 testing questions in this new quiz book. What grape produces wine that sometimes has the aroma of diesel or petrol? From which wine region in France does Sancerre come? In making Sherry, what is the system of topping up casks with older sherry called? The answers to these questions and more can all be found in The Wine Quiz Book. With sections on different wines from countries around the world, wine growing and making, anagrams of well-known wines, grape varieties, as well as general questions about the entire wine making process, you are certain to learn something new. This is a must-have book for anyone with an interest in the wine industry from the most discerning connoisseur to the enthusiastic amateur. If you like wine, you won't want to be without this book.

Wine: A social and cultural historyof the drink that changed our livesis a wine history with a difference. Most histories of wine (like HughJohnson's The Story of Wine, PaulLukacs's Inventing Wine, and RodPhillips's own A Short History of Wine)are chronological narratives that begin with wine in the ancient world and runthrough to modern times. Wine has been seen typically as the subject of broaderhistorical trends and events - how, for example, economic and diplomaticconditions favoured or interrupted the wine trade, and how changes in tasteaffected wine styles. Winedeparts from these approaches byorganizing chapters by theme and by focusing much more on how wine has beenpositively and actively implicated in broad historical changes. It looks at theway wine has been used to demarcate social groups and genders, how wine hasshaped facets of social life as diverse as medicine, religion, and militaryactivity, how vineyards and wine cultures have transformed landscapes, and howsuccessive innovations in wine packaging - from amphoras to barrels to bottles- have affected and been affected by commerce and consumption. Wineneither sees the history of wine as the passiveresult of historical forces nor sees wine as a prime agent of historicalchange. Rather, it views wine as a critical actor in key trends in thehistories of society, culture, and the environment. Each chapter takes a singletheme and the material within each is organized chronologically. The book isformed of chapters that together provide a compact and theme-specific historyof wine in its own right, enabling readers to consume chapters asself-contained units, rather than as parts of a longer narrative whole. This isan ideal reference resource for wine lovers and historians alike.