PLAYBACK STL REVIEW OF "A NEW RELIGION IN MECCA"


Delirious Nomad
11.06 Highlights
Written by Byron Kerman

You don't have to like the taste of beer to like the taste of the Schlafly Brewery monthly newsletter, The Growler. Owner/editor/tastemaker Tom Schlafly writes a rambling column that somehow manages, in the style of James Burke's defunct TV show Connections, to draw a line connecting seemingly disparate historical events to their modern effects. A typical glance at The Growler yields a history lesson in kings, queens, torture, war, Papal edicts, enlightened nobles and always, somehow or other, the current state of beer. That's why the new book by Schlafly, A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewery in St. Louis, may just be more than just barley and vanity.