Seltzertopia: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary Drink by Barry Joseph

I love this book. It is the perfect introduction to the modern world of sparkling water. Joseph treats seltzer less like a product and more like a cultural artifact (which sparks the ethnographic researcher in me) that keeps reinventing itself...from soda fountains to today’s global aisle of cans and bottles. For tasting and understanding sparkling water, the value is in how it frames carbonation as the main character. It shows how preferences for carbonation level, bubble texture, and “bite” evolved alongside technology and changing ideas of health and refreshment. It also helps you explore why some waters lean aggressively carbonated, others are soft and fine-bubbled, and how style choices relate to consumer identity as much as source or mineral content. The punchline is that sparkling water is not just geology in a bottle. It is history, technology, culture, and more.