Overview

More than 80 years before the invention of Coca-Cola, sweet carbonated drinks became popular around the world, provoking remarkably similar arguments that they do today. Are they medicinally, morally, culturally or nutritionally good or bad? They have been loved and hated for being cold or sweet or fizzy or stimulating. Many of their flavours are international lemon and ginger were more popular than cola until about 1920. Some are local: tarragon in Russia, cucumber in New York, red bean in Japan, and chinotto (exceedingly bitter orange) in Italy. This book looks at how something made from water, sugar and soda became big business but also became deeply important to people; fizzy drinks' symbolic meanings are far more complex than the water, gas and sugar from which they are made.

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9781789144918

Table of Contents

Reviews

A sweeping history of soft drinks . . . [that includes] coverage of patent medicines, the science of fizz, the politics and worldwide spread of Coke and Pepsi, and the wide range of ingredients, drugs, and sweeteners that have gone into these drinks. --Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It

Soda. The word conjures a nostalgia for twentieth-century America, for gleaming diners inside lustrous malls, where teenagers marvel before nozzles and levers and colourful advertisements that herald streams of sweet frothing liquid. Soda, fizzy drinks, or “pop” in the UK, go flat in minutes and taste sickly after a few mouthfuls. It has always been the paraphernalia – the advertising, merchandise, packaging and apparatus for serving them – that ensures their cultural dominance . . . In Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A global history, Judith Levin traces the technologies that developed and mass-produced these beverages. * TLS * In Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History, Judith Levin examines the mystery behind the spectacular rise of these drinks, the changes they have gone through, as well as the meanings they acquired over time . . . The book is “bubbly” and luscious, just like its topic . . . The investigation allows us to travel alongside the carbonated beverages, tracking their production, glory and fall into disgrace (in some environments), and helps us understand what it meant to be a consumer in the old days, while providing photos to stimulate our imagination. * Food & History * A sweeping history of soft drinks . . . [that includes] coverage of patent medicines, the science of fizz, the politics and worldwide spread of Coke and Pepsi, and the wide range of ingredients, drugs, and sweeteners that have gone into these drinks. * Mark Pendergrast, author of 'For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It' *

Author Information

Judith Levin has worked as a book editor and writer. Her books include Ichiro Suzuki (Baseball Superstars series, 2008).

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