Fizz
How Soda Shook Up the World
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The story of soda is the story of the modern world, a tale of glamorous bubbles, sparkling dreams, big bucks, miracle cures, and spreading waistlines. Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World charts soda's remarkable, world-changing journey from awe-inspiring natural mystery to ubiquitous presence in all our lives.
Along the way you'll meet the patent medicine peddlers who spawned some of the world's biggest brands with their all-healing concoctions, as well as the grandees of science and medicine mesmerized by the magic of bubbling water. You'll discover how fizzy pop cashed in on Prohibition, helped presidents reach the White House, and became public health enemy number one. You'll learn how Pepsi put the fizz in Apple's marketing, how Coca-Cola joined the space race, and how soda's sticky sweet allure defined and built nations. And you'll find out how an alleged soda-loving snail rewrote the law books.
Fizz tells the extraordinary tale of how a seemingly simple everyday refreshment zinged and pinged over our taste buds and, in doing so, changed the world around us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his fascinating history of carbonated drinks, Donovan (Replay: The History of Video Games) reveals that fizz is about a lot more than just bubbles. The soda of today started out as a far different beverage Hippocrates looked to mineral waters as a cure-all for ailments, aging, and even as a way to bless marriages. But it was not until the first soda fountain in the early 1800s that an industry was born. Carbonated waters that had largely been enjoyed at spas by only the wealthiest could now be a daily pleasure for everyone. When Coca-Cola came on the scene in the late 19th century with its first ad touting the confection as "Refreshing! Exhilarating!" it was the start of the company's attempt at global domination. Donovan details the brand's ascension as it fought off the temperance movement, lawsuits, and competitors like Pepsi (which went through nearly three bankruptcies in its early years only to become a powerhouse in its own right thanks to the Pepsi Challenge and a famous Michael Jackson commercial) and anti-colas like 7 Up and Mountain Dew. Coke helped shape the modern corporate model with some of the earliest instances of franchises, became the exclusive beverage of the U.S. military during WWII, and ended up, along with Pepsi, in space aboard the Challenger. Soda has certainly taken hits recently with a growing obesity epidemic and city restrictions, but it seems destined to hit the sweet spot indefinitely.
