My mother doesn't let me drink coffee. As a student at Stuyvesant, this is almost laughable. In fact, among the list of drinks that A History of the World in Six Glasses presents as the most influential drinks in the world, I am only allowed to drink tea. After all, I'm prohibited by law from purchasing (and publicly possessing in New York State) half of the drinks discussed in the novel and from abstaining from soda. Not drinking most of the drinks in these books put me in the favorable category of the most impartial. Of course, society and location have probably changed my perception of each of these drinks, but I'll try to keep that minimal. Well done. People generally don't claim that "drinks have [shaped] human history" unless they have good reason to do so. With imagination, beer could be considered highly influential, on par with special interest groups in Washington. For example, what if our early ancestors strayed from their already established water sources because their judgment became clouded after drinking a beer at the local pub? I mean, I suppose a more likely explanation would be that more territory could be explored if water could be purified, but it would be nice to believe that humans were only able to advance after the invention drinking games. As abundant land was discovered, humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers, indulging in the whims of barley and wild grains. Over time, humans cultivated the grains that nourished them, allowing them to consume more stable calories throughout the year and have more children. At the time, it was not practical for women to care for more than one child, as only one could be carried on the back. Additionally, children and women will have to wear the ...... middle of paper ......t in society, culture, America and physics. The spirit of invention continues today with energy drinks and nutritional shakes as well as scientific advances undoubtedly fueled by caffeine and late-night parties. Yet each of the drinks on this list was discovered and used for a reason: they satisfied powerful desires and demands. Beer replaced water, tea gave the English better health and more power, coffee created places to socialize, rum gave America the alcohol it so desperately needed, and Coke wet the lips of the children around the world. The funny thing about examining revolutions in the drinking world is that they tend to be tied to economics. Finance is an important thing: without trade, progress made in one part of the world would never have spread to others. And to think it could have all started with a few beers at the pub and some hasty decisions..