Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World

Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World

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. Whether you call it soda or pop, it’s the foundation of one of the modern world’s most enduring industries, admired and reviled in almost equal measure from its very beginning. Donovan has researched the business’s eighteenth-century beginnings, when scientists identified the chemical elements that enliven drinking water with tiny, tickly bubbles. Learning to generate, control, preserve, and transport effervescence took decades, but technological advances gradually gave rise to such iconic institutions as the soda fountain and the drive-in. The other major component in soft-drink manufacture is sugar, whose price and availability has driven much of the industry’s profit margins. Atlanta’s Coca-Cola seemed once to own a near-monopoly, but rivals captured public imagination with innovative advertising to challenge Coke’s dominance. Soda’s current status as putative villain in the world’s nutrition crisis looks to continue the beverage’s controversial history. A fascinating cultural and business chronicle of a product everyone takes for granted. --Mark Knoblauch "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 “Highly recommended for curious lay readers as well as for public and college library collections.” —The Midwest Book Review Tristan Donovan is the author of Replay: The History of Video Games . His work has appeared in publications such as the Times , Stuff , the Daily Telegraph , the Guardian , and the Big Issue .