Book Report

I’m currently reading a delightful book by Am Stewart called “The Drunken Botanist”, all about the wonderful, wildly diverse ways in which plants and humans together have created alcoholic beverages. The Amazon listing gives a good description:

https://www.amazon.com/Drunken-Botanist-Amy-Stewart/dp/1616200464

I highly recommend going for the hardcover edition, not only for the illustrations but also because it’s a gem of the bookbinder’s art. I have two other of Amy Stewart’s books – “Wicked Bugs” and “Wicked Plants” – that are equally good, in presentation and content.

Not only is “The Drunken Botanist” fascinating and illuminating – I never knew that…! – it’s also often funny. Here’s just one bit:

“The science of fermentation is wonderfully simple. Yeast eat sugar. They leave behind two waste products, ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. If we were being honest, we would admit that what a liquor store sells is, chemically speaking, little more than the litter boxes of millions of domesticated yeast organisms, wrapped up in pretty bottles with fancy price tags.”