I read and enjoyed “A History of the World in 6 Glasses”. The story it tells is that the Ice Age gave way to fields full of grain in the Levant, and people there took to softening what they gathered by soaking it in water. If left out too long, the resulting gruel would sometimes accidentally turn into bread or beer, and they liked that even better.
I liked Mike Rowe’s How Booze Built America.
Thag: “Throg, I dare you to drink that gross, stinking, bubbling, weeks-old puddle in the granary.”
Throg: “OK ... yuck ... THAT WAS AWESOME!!!”