The emperor of wine
the rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the reign of American taste
This is the story of how an American lawyer caused a revolution in the way wines around the globe are made, sold, and talked about. Parker's influential newsletter, The Wine Advocate, exerts the single most significant influence on consumers' wine-buying habits and trends, and impacts the way wine is made in every wine-producing country in the world. To his fans, Parker is part enthusiastic sensualist and part consumer crusader. To his enemies, he is a self-appointed wine judge bent on reducing the meaning of wine to a two-digit number. The man who now rules the world of wine has been the focus of both adulation and death threats. He rose to his pinnacle of power by means of the traditional American virtues of hard work, determination, and integrity--coupled with an unshakeable ego and a maniacal obsession with a beverage that aspires to a seductive art form.--From publisher description.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Steady pace
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A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-0600-9368-6
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL3423202M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
Preview the edition to decide how it fits your available reading time.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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These matches combine shared categories with author, publication-era, and reading-length signals.
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Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar publication era.
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Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar publication era.
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Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar publication era.
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Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar publication era.
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Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar publication era.