From ancient Mesopotamian fermentation practices to the resurgent American craft brewery, a new book offers a scientific and historical perspective on beer.
A Natural History of Beer, by Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall, asks what beer can teach us about biology, history, and the natural world. They explain how we came to drink beer, what ingredients combine to give beers their distinctive flavours, how beer’s chemistry works at the molecular level, and how various societies have regulated the production and consumption of beer.
Drawing from such diverse subject areas as animal behaviour, ecology, history, archaeology, chemistry, sociology, law, genetics, physiology, neurobiology, and more, DeSalle and Tattersall entertain and inform with their engaging stories of beer throughout human history and the science behind it all.
DeSalle is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Biology and its programme for microbial research. Tattersall is curator emeritus, AMNH Division of Anthropology. They co-authored A Natural History of Wine and The Brain: Big Bangs, Behaviors, and Beliefs. Both live in New York City.
• A Natural History of Beer will be published on April 9 by Yale University Press at £20 in hardback.
