Water by Ian Miller

Water by Ian Miller

Water: A Global History 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.

Lavishly illustrated with full-colour photographs on almost every page. . [Millers] 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. * TLS *
Millers volume onWateroffers a different sort of history. He explores the role of an easily defined substance a tasteless mixture of oxygen and hydrogen atoms that are chemically bonded together across the millennia, from the Incas and ancient Egyptians to the present day . . . Miller devotes a chapter to water-lovers efforts to make an otherwise bland drink more interesting, from 18th-century German butter water, to the invention of carbonated water, to the mass marketization of lemonade. He also explores the commercialization of bottled water, and current concerns around the global struggle for access to clean, safe drinking water. Water may be humanitys simplest edible product, but its also one fraught with some of the most complex politics in the present day. * Popmatters *
Drawing from a variety of fascinating sources, Ian Miller skillfully argues that water was, and is, a curiosity among drinks, deceptively simple in appearance, often lauded for its health-giving properties, and sometimes feared for its potential to harm or even kill millions . . . thoroughly absorbing. * Carol Helstosky, author of Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Modern Italy and editor of The Routledge History of Food *

Ian Miller is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Ulster, and the author of several books.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781780235011
ISBN 10	1780235011
Title	Water
Author	Ian Miller
Series	Edible
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Reaktion Books
Year published	2015-10-01
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.