Beer is the third most widely consumed beverage in the world, after water and tea. Many of us love it but don’t give much thought to where it originated, how it has changed with the migration and climate of its creators and how much it drives economies today.
Take two beer-loving geographers and a crazy idea to educate people about their favorite beverage, and you’ve got the makings of a book about global spatial relationships, as seen through beer goggles. Appropriately, the book was born as a sketch on the back of a cocktail napkin.
Mark Patterson and Nancy Hoalst-Pullen, a.k.a. The Beer Doctors on Facebook and Twitter, are geographers from Kennesaw State University in Georgia. They published an academic book called The Geography of Beer last March, and have since turned it into a course and a study abroad program. Hoalst-Pullen will be giving a TED talk on using beer to expand geographic literacy later this month. …