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Rating: 
Summary: Bubbly, dry and very palatable
Review: Amazing! This is definitely different from those 6-inche business textbook. You can leran the whole story about marketing or market competition. If you are in beer business, or fast moving consumer goods business you will be surprised with the similiarity between the book and your realistic business competition.
Rating:
Summary: Humorous look at the business of beer selling--very fun!
Review: Beer Blast was an incredibly enjoyable book to read and highly informative (if you are a fan of beer). I will admit that he was a bit focused on Heinekien, but considering his family background. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about beer.
Rating:
Summary: Light and Enjoyable with a pleasant aftertaste
Review: I don't drink beer much, but my father does, so I bought "Beer Blast" as a birthday gift for my dad. I started reading and I just couldn't put the book down. Now I need to buy another copy for myself. The recent history of American brewers and importers is a fascinating one. Van Munching focuses on the marketing of beer, and although he benefits from 20-20 hindsight, his analysis is very insightful. This book is an easy read that has one major flaw--it ends. I wanted more. I certainly hope Mr. Van Munching writes a sequel that exposes more of the beer industry. Note to marketing teachers: this book would make a fabulous text.
Rating:
Summary: Smooth, crisp, flavorful.....just a great book
Review: Now here's a book about something near and dear to my heart (and mouth). I bought this book when it first came out after hearing a radio interview with Philip Van Munching and finding him not only very informative, but also hilarious. This book is very entertaining and informative (and it always makes me thirsty for a cold one, but I digress).Being in the Van Munching family it's hard to knock him for his emphasis on Heineken (is he supposed to know more about Miller and Anheiser Busch than his own family's company?) The book gives a very detailed background of the beer industry in the US but mainly focuses on the period beginning in the seventies which he refers to as the "Beer Wars" when Anheiser Busch, Miller and Coors began to take over. Anyone interested in business, advertising and marketing in particular, will really enjoy this book. Oh yeah, and if you like to enjoy a cold one from time to time you'll also like this book. I've aleways been more of a microbrew drinker myself (beer snob) so I've never really enjoyed anything brewed by the big three. After reading this book I don't think I'll be enjoying anything from them anytime soon. Like one of the reviews on the back of the book says, " I don't know which one of them deserves my money less." Cheers!
Rating:
Summary: Smooth, crisp, flavorful.....just a great book
Review: This book is a great read and an interesting study of the beer industry and its history. The author due to his ties (son of the Heineken importer) provides great insight, but also some thoughtful and usable management and marketing analysis.
Rating:
Summary: Very good read
Review: This book was very informative and written quite well. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone that likes to read about industry profiles. I also liked the fact that I did not have to know that much about the beer industry in order to enjoy the book.
Rating:
Summary: Beer Blast is a blast
Review: This is terrific reading, not only for beer lovers and marketing buffs. Philip van Munching, grandson of the man who first brought Heineken to the United States, has written a non-fiction book that contains all the ingredients of a first-class thriller: megalomanic dynasties, a fatal car accident the evidence of which was tempered with, mad-gone advertising gurus, and conglomerates trying to take over the hood ("get your girl in the mood quicker, and get your jimmy thicker with St. Ides malt liquor"). Along the way, the reader learns quite a bit about marketing. That is what the Ivy-League-trainined marketing whiz kids at Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors, apparently never did. Instead, they squandered away hundreds of millions of dollars in their futile attempts to win one of the most fiercely fought business wars of the last twenty five years: the war for the American beer market. Van Munching knows how they did it, and he tells it with wit and an incredible insider's knowledge. Great story, great writing, great book!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting insider account
Review: You can read his book in at least three different ways: as an attempt to write a business bestseller; as a history of the beer business in the USA; and as a memoir of PVM's years in the business. I greatly enjoyed reading the parts of the book that lent themselves to being read in the third of these ways. In particular, when PVM is seething about the tactics used by Jim Koch to market Sam Adams, or the antics of the MBAs who ended up in charge of the company his family had built, he writes with great energy. Hence the last half of the book works is a tremendous read. The first half is more detached, but most of it comprises a more than competent account of the years between the launch of Lite beer and that of Sam Adams. The first chapter, however, is a rather rushed and disjoined account of the first few centuries of beer in America. The introduction that precedes it is the worst part of the book. PVM opens with a reference to the Prisoner's Dilemma, and then goes on to mention game theory. He doesn't seem very interested in these topics, though, and makes little mention of them in the body of the book. My guess is that PVM or his agent or editor decided that they are trendy topics, and so might snare some trendy readers. Hence Beer Blast is at its worst when PVM tries too hard to write a bestseller, at its best when he shares his experience in this interesting business, and somewhere in the middle when he writes part of the history of it. I recommend it, but can't follow prior reviewers in giving it five stars.
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