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ED McCARTHY and MARY EWING-MULLIGAN: Wine for Dummies, 7 th Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2018, 432 pp., ISBN: 978-1119512738 (paperback), $24.99.
In the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitions of dummy that could refer to a potential reader of this book are most unflattering: “a dumb person” and “a dolt, blockhead.” And yet, since the first book in the For Dummies series appeared in 1991, more than 200 million books with about 2,500 titles are in print. There is even a competing collection with a much more offensive name, The Complete Idiot's Guides. There must be a following that is not put off by the insulting titles since Wine for Dummies recently released a seventh edition.
Husband and wife, Ed McCarthy, a Certified Wine Educator, and Mary Ewing-Mulligan, the first American woman to earn a Master of Wine, unquestionably have the credentials to produce this guide ambitiously aimed at an audience well beyond dummies. In addition to someone who knows little about wine but wants to learn more, the book is pitched to those who “know something about wine…but want to understand it better, from the ground up” as well as to those who are “already very knowledgeable but realize that [he or she] can always discover more” (p. 3). The results are certainly competent but mixed.
The text consists of an Introduction and eight parts that are subdivided into chapters: “Getting Started with Wine” (five chapters), “Wine and You: Up Close and Personal” (four chapters), “Wine's Classic Face: The ‘Old World’ of Wine” (three chapters), “Wine's Modern Face: The ‘New World’ of Wine” (two chapters), “Wine's Exotic Face” (two chapters), “When You've Caught the Bug” (three chapters), “The Part of Tens” (two chapters), and “Appendixes” (three appendixes). Icons in the margins are standard features in the For Dummies series. Six are used in this book: Real Deal denotes bargain wine; Remember highlights material that bears repeating; Technical Stuff, Tip, Warning, and Worth the Search are self-explanatory. Oddly, the icon for Tip is called a bull's-eye despite being a light bulb.
Part 1 covers some of the fundamentals about wine. Chapter 1, “Wine 101,” charges through in 12 pages the basics...