Drink, as an embodied semiotic and material form, mediates social life. This book examines the fundamental nature of drink through a series of modular but connected ethnographic discussions. It looks at the way the materiality of a specific drink (coffee, wine, water, beer) serves as the semiotic medium for a genre of sociability in a specific time and place.<BR><BR>Rather than treat drinks as mere props in the exclusively human drama of the social, the book promotes them to actors on the stage.<BR><BR>`From coffee to vodka, and from wines to waters, Manning brings to life the extraordinary registers of meaning across everyday practices. By his bright telling, modernity itself can be understood anew through a tale of multiple imbibings. This delightful book should find a wide readership among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists, as well as scholars of the modern age, semiotics, and food studies.'---Professor Bruce Grant, Department of Anthropology, NYU, USA<BR><BR>`How much of social life flows from what we drink, when and how we drink it, and with whom! Through a glass clearly and with great ethnographic and semiotic insight, Paul Manning brilliantly contextualizes the potables of American capitalist modernity - (gin) martinis, for instance, and Starbucks coffee - as well as those of Georgian socialism and post-socialism - vodka, beer, wine, and fizzy drinks - revealing their central place in the cultural worlds in which they are produced and consumed. The introductory "aperitif", a treatise in miniature on the proper semiotic study of materiality, will become an instant reading-list classic, as will, no doubt, the entire lively and fascinating book.---Michael Silverstein, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, USA'