For over 100 years Booklist magazine has helped tens of thousands of librarians as a book review source. In their latest addition, they take on Seltzertopia! My favorite line is the last:

After reading Joseph’s anecdotally detailed account, parched drinkers will have a hard time picking up a bottle of sparkling water and not being in awe of this simple beverage’s complicated history.

Thank you Mark Knoblauch for the lovely write-up, which can be read in full here or below.

Seltzertopia: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary Drink.
Joseph, Barry (author).

Oct. 2018. 304p. Behrman, $26.95 (9780874419757). 338.7.
REVIEW. First published September 15, 2018 (Booklist).

It may look like no more than water with some bubbles, but seltzer has become a national obsession. It provides some of soda pop’s kick, but it has no sugar, no calories. Originally, it flowed from some European springs, and English chemist Joseph Priestley lauded its potential benefits. The European beverage translated to the New World as Jewish immigrants carried with them a taste for seltzer. The invention of the siphon (recognizable from a host of American movies as a comic squirting prop) made seltzer available universally. Then soda fountains became fixtures in drug stores, where soda jerks concocted fizzy egg creams and ice cream sodas in a rainbow of flavors. The twentieth century found Americans returning from vacations abroad newly intrigued with bubbly bottled water. After reading Joseph’s anecdotally detailed account, parched drinkers will have a hard time picking up a bottle of sparkling water and not being in awe of this simple beverage’s complicated history.

And thank you to David Heller who saw it first and shared it with me.