Factoid, Spain, and the Philippines drink the most gin. Who knew? My friend Bryan doesn’t like it much, well really not at all. I kid him about it all the time so I thought I would find a book to maybe entice him to try it.
Here’s a new book for Bryan, Gin, by Shonna Milliken Humphry. In the brief write-up, the author extols the virtue and hidden excess of the drink.
“Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Gin tastes like Christmas to some and rotten pine chips to others, but nearly everyone familiar with the spirit holds immediate gin nostalgia. Although early medical textbooks treated it as a healing agent, early alchemists (as well as their critics) claimed gin’s base was a path to immortality-and also Satan’s tool. In more recent times, the gin trade consolidated the commercial and political power of nations and prompted a social campaign against women. Gin has been used successfully as a defense for murder; blamed for massive unrest in 18th-century England; and advertised for as an abortifacient.”
