Water : A Global History
Author(s): Ian Miller
Water: A Global History provides a concise account of our relationship with water throughout history and around the world. The book shows how we obtained clean drinking water in the past, what alternatives to water were available, and how our relationship with water has changed over time. The book explores how we have consumed water throughout history, and our efforts to transform it into a palatable drink (mainly through boiling it for tea, or distilling it into mildly alcoholic beverages); the use of water for medicinal purposes; and how water has become commercialised over the past two centuries.
Product Information
“Miller’s main theme is the history of attempts to resolve the tension between veneration of water as pure, cleansing, and healthful, and fear of it as contaminated and dangerous. A second theme is how water, which has no smell or taste, became interesting. People in Western societies had to be told to consume this boring drink, thereby creating a market for more appealing beverages with added nutrients, carbonation, sugars, and flavours.”
- Times Literary Supplement (JC BookGrocer)
Ian Miller is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Ulster.
General Fields
- :
- : Reaktion Books
- : Reaktion Books
- : September 2015
- : 197mm X 120mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Ian Miller
- : Hardback
- : 641.2
- : 144
- : 60 illustrations, 40 in colour