I recently purchased The Oxford Companion to Beer from Amazon. 


To tell you the truth I could hardly wait for its release.  The book is simply bound with blank end pages. The book jacket is very handsome.  It has very few photo plates considering the number of pages (a hefty 920) and amount of information in the book.

The Editor in Chief, Garrett Oliver brings elegance to the undertaking of the job which is well bore out in the Preface. Horst Dornbusch, Associate Editor as well as founder of Cerevisia Communications, is a great asset to the of compilation which is a massive undertaking for the subject.  Another heavyweight in the industry and advisory board to the publication is Charles Bamforth. It is difficult to undertake any serious research of beer without coming across his name.

While the book is very modest in print it is behemoth in content. The topical outline is comprehensive. Each subject is a wealth of concise information in relatively brief entries. Reading such an entry requires a great amount of meditation on the subject. A book of this depth is well overdue. No serious beer writer, researcher, aficionado or consumer should be without this book.