For millennia, beer has been a favorite beverage in cultures across the globe. After water and tea, it is the most popular drink in the world, and it is at the center of a $450 billion industry.

For millennia, beer has been a favorite beverage in cultures across the globe. After water and tea, it is the most popular drink in the world, and it is at the center of a $450 billion industry.
The first major reference work to investigate the history and vast scope of beer, The Oxford Companion to Beer features more than 1,100 A-Z entries written by 166 of the world's most prominent beer experts. Attractively illustrated with over 140 images, the book covers everything from the agricultural makeup of various beers to the technical elements of the brewing process, local effects of brewing on regions around the world, and the social and political implications of sharing a beer.

Presents a philosophical reference work. In this edition, an international assembly of 249 philosophers has contributed almost 2,000 entries. It offers discussions of the aspects of philosophy, and of the lives and work of the great philosophers. It is meant as an introduction for general readers and as a guide for students.

Oxford Companions are known for their authority, comprehensiveness, and browsability--"the best reference books in the language," according to Harper's. Perhaps the most well-known Companion of all has been The Oxford Companion to English Literature, now in its revised fifth edition. But the literary canon isn't static, and modern literature in all of its richness demands a more comprehensive Companion to cover the wealth of contemporary writing crafted in our language: The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. This unique new reference book to English-language writers and writing throughout the present century, in all major genres and from all around the world, covers the gamut from Joseph Conrad to Will Self, Virginia Woolf to David Mamet, Ezra Pound to Peter Carey, and James Joyce to Amy Tan. The survivors of the Victorian age featured in The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English--writers such as Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, Rabindranath Tagore, and Henry James--could hardly have imagined how richly diverse "Literature in English" would become by the end of the century. Fiction, plays, poetry, and a whole range of non-fictional writing are celebrated in this informative, readable, and catholic reference book, which includes entries on literary movements, periodicals, and over 400 individual works, as well as articles on some 2,300 authors.