Food has a unique political power, for several reasons: food links the world’s richest consumers with its poorest farmers; food choices have always been a potent means of social signaling; modern shop...
Drinks have had a closer connection to the flow of history than is generally acknowledged, and a greater influence on its course. Understanding the ramifications of who drank what, and why, and where...
In the United States radio listeners were gathered up by networks that saw them as consumers to be sold to; in Britain they were the masses to be instructed and improved; in Germany they were the peop...
A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. —Rober...
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a period defined by the struggle for individual political, economic, and personal liberty against various forms of oppression, and marked by war, genocide, and the threat of...
In the United States radio was centralized to maximize advertising revenue; in Britain to preserve and promote the values of the elite; and in Germany to advance Nazi propaganda. Whatever the reason,...
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge. —Marcus Tullius Ci...
Image of a Roman wax tablet, which looks very like an iPad.
However, one listing of common abbreviations compiled in 1859 includes 1 1 (dot dot, dot dot) for I AM READY; G A (dash dash dot, dot dash) for GO AHEAD, S F D for STOP FOR DINNER; G M for GOOD MORNIN...
Descendants of de Clieu's original plant were also proliferating in the region, in Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. Ultimately, Brazil became the world's dominant coffee supplier, leaving Arabi...
Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news...
Television’s appeal is apparent from the steady increase in the average amount of time spent watching television in America, from four and a half hours a day in 1950 to five hours in 1960, six hours i...
One survey of American newspapers found that the number of articles written by papers’ own writers increased from 25 percent to 45 percent between the 1820s and 1850s.
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
One writer, Gardiner Hubbard, described the American telegraph system as peculiarly a business system; eighty per cent of the messages are on business matters… . the managers of the telegraph know tha...
No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could...
Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits fro...
Most of the stories in the Boston News-Letter were simply copied from the London papers.
When George Washington ran for election to Virginia's local assembly, the House of Burgesses, in 1758, his campaign team handed out twenty-eight gallons of rum, fifty gallons of rum punch, thirty-four...
The mouth of a perfectly contented man is filled with beer. —Egyptian proverb, c. 2200 BCE