Beers of North America

Rating:
Summary: Perfect for any beer aficionado
Review: Its a pretty cool book coffee table book, crammed with color pictures. It give the history of beer in America. How it became popular, the 'genealogy' of the major breweries, all the way up though the present surge of micro-breweries. It also has an index of the breweries of North America, listing a brief history for each, along with their flagship produces and picture of labels.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Book, But Not Always Accurate!
Review: This is a great book for the most part. However, there are some horrible inaccuracies and mis-information. The sections regarding New York City Brewing History are the worst. For instance, the author indicates that the Ruppert and Rheingold Breweries were always the same (Rheingold actually took over Ruppert in the early 1960's). The section titled "New York's Big Three" should actually be "New York's Big Four" (Ballantine, Schaefer, Rheingold/Liebmann, and Ruppert (Knickerbocker).

This book is a good overview of many beers and brewers, but is not a complete history by any stretch. Still, it does wet your appetite for a more complete North American Brewing History.

The pictures are great, particularly the beer labels. But even here some of the labels are grouped with the wrong brewer.

All in all a good book and a plesant reading experience. But brewing history purists will have to take it with a grain of salt.