Overview

How bubbly sugar water helped define modern culture

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.

Reviews

"Donovan succeeds in his attempt to create an extremely comprehensive work on the subject like none have before. Recommended for those who enjoy industry histories and a must-have for libraries." —Library Journal

"A fascinating cultural and business chronicle of a product everyone takes for granted." —Booklist

"Like the beverage, Fizz is addictive." —Shepherd Express

"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." —Publishers Weekly

"Snappy and informative the whole way through." —Slog, from Seattle's The Stranger

"Donovan charts a refreshing albeit number-heavy history of fizzy drinks, from the first 'fixed air' waters to ever-sweeter iterations that have changed how the world quenches its thirst." —Discover Magazine

"In his new book, Fizz, journalist Tristan Donovan takes us on a fast-paced ride through the history of the soft-drink industry." —Wall Street Journal

Praise for Tristan Donovan's Replay: The History of Video Games "A wonderfully thorough and entertaining history" —The Guardian "While other history books have covered the topic, Tristan Donovan's 500-page tome is the most wide-ranging history I've read." —Wired "One history lesson worth its weight in quarters." —Bookgasm "Comprehensive and wide-ranging—yet engrossing and splendidly entertaining. If you read only one history of video games—Replay is it." —Eugene Jarvis, creator of the arcade games Defender and Smash TV "If you enjoy reading about games, there's absolutely no way that you're not going to find spending quality time with this rewarding." —Kieron Gillen, writer for games website "Rock Paper Shotgun" and the comic Uncanny X-Men