Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us takes readers on a lively journey through the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the modern beer world. The book illustrates that beer is far more than a beverage. It represents a marker of identity, a source of pleasure, an object of connoisseurship, and a livelihood for those who produce and distribute it. Drawing on leading sociological and psychological perspectives, the authors argue that our enduring relationship with beer and its many varieties reflects the very roots of our society, including its collective values and norms, power structures, and inequity in race, gender, sexuality, and social class. Beer and Society explores these aspects of beer as sites of growing struggles for social change.

Beer and Society: How We Make Beer and Beer Makes Us takes readers on a lively journey through the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of the modern beer world. This book illustrates that beer is far more than a beverage. As a finely-crafted cultural product, beer can be a part of our identity, a source of pleasure and camaraderie, an object of connoisseurship, and a livelihood for those who are behind the beer itself. Drawing on leading sociological and psychological perspectives, the authors argue that our enduring relationship with beer reflects the very roots of our society, including its collective values and norms, power structures, and persistent inequities based on race, gender, sexuality, and social class. Beer and Society explores beer as an embodiment of who we are and a force to energize social change.