Review: The Book of Gin by Richard Barnett

In other news, I have a review up at Unreality SF, of the H. G. Wells Big Finish Classic audio adaptation of The Shape of Things to Come. I would have never tried to bring this book to audio, but it's probably the best of Big Finish's Wells adaptations!

Hardcover, 275 pages
Published 2013 (originally 2011)
Acquired December 2016
Read April 2017

The Book of Gin by Richard Barnett

Barnett traces the history of gin, mostly in the Anglophone world, from its introduction to the present day. He's particularly interested in what you might call the moral status of gin: it is the center of various moral panics at first, but gradually over time become a drink with a higher class status. It's a little on the dry side, but it's pretty interesting, filling in a lot I didn't know. It's even a surprisingly useful social history of eighteenth-century England in general.