Review: The Search for God and Guinness
October 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The title of this book piqued my interest. Having spent a number of years as a member of a famously teetotaling church denomination I had been used to thinking of alcoholic beverages as something bordering on immoral. While I had left that denomination and even came to a more enlightened conclusion about alcohol that allowed me to develop a passion for craft beer, I guess I still had some emotional baggage regarding beer.
Stephen Mansfield writes an engaging history of the Guinness brewing dynasty. A history that includes a strong faith in God and led the Guinness company to pioneer social change in Dublin and throughout the world. While we think that companies that provide for their employees well-being as a modern invention of a dot-com company like Google, Guinness was providing for their employees in a manner to rival these dot-com’s at the beginning of the 20th century. Just as amazing as the Guinness family’s investment in their employees was the story of Rupert Guinness who took his new bride and their £5 million pound wedding gift and moved into the slums to work towards improving the lives of the poor.
In a departure from the form of a traditional historical narrative, Mansfield concludes his work with a five point epilogue describing the values that made Guinness successful that Mansfield calls “The Guinness Way”. It’s an interesting conclusion for a worthy book.
My only criticism of the book is not so much the fault of the writer but of the enormous story he tries to tell in a brief 270 pages. The Guinness story is so big, with such an interesting cast of characters that any attempt to distill it down to such a brief form invariably leaves it feeling a bit disjointed. In spite of this I’d recommend this book to anyone with a love of God and a taste of good beer.
As a matter of disclosure, I participate in Thomas Nelson’s Book Review blogger program. I get copies of the books I review gratis in exchange for reading and writing reviews of the books. For more information about this visit: http://brb.thomasnelson.com/
Shalom,
Scott D
