Customer Review: Boring read

This was an extremely boring read, and read like a junior high text book. Way too much information, very few anecdotes. I can't remember anything interesting to take away from the book, and am sad I plowed threw the whole thing (I was on vacation, and that was the only book I brought.) I am a wine specialist and educator, and found no inspiration in this. Find another wine history book.

Customer Review: An enjoyable history of wine, civilization and commerce.

This is an enjoyable and highly informative book. I had no idea of the way that wine was so intricately tied up in the progress of civilization. The book covers a vast swath of history and almost the entire planet while describing the evolution of wine and the wine trade.

The author seems to hold few biases and gives an even-handed treatment to the various aspects of this story. The only bias that I detected was towards wine merchants. This is not surprising since he makes his history as a merchant very clear. But I was disappointed that the final sentence, and particularly the final phrase, of this book were so focused on the importance of wine merchants. I read this book as a result of an interest in wine and history. Wine merchants are a necessary part of the story, but from my point of view they're just one cog in the wheel.

As another reviewer mentioned, the author's writing style leaves a little to be desired. This is not a major fault. It's just that I found his sentence structures and choice of words to be a bit awkward at times.

Although I've raised a couple of critical points, I still enthusiastically recommend this book. It's a fairly quick read, is filled with easy-to-digest information, and pulls together many facets of the story of wine. If you like wine and history, this is the book for you.

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