Having written Man Walks Into A Pub, Pete Brown thought he deserved a holiday. Leaving Britain was one thing, but getting away from beer proved impossible. For while the British believe beer is, well, British, it seems a few others have cottoned on to its unique appeal. The Germans claim beer as their own; the Czechs, it turns out, invented modern lager; the Japanese like their beer made from rice and the Spanish see it as cool new drink, far more fashionable than wine. What's going on?

After a great deal of thought (about 15 seconds), Pete Brown realised the only way to find out was to go on the biggest pub crawl ever. Drinking in more than four hundred bars and pubs in twenty-seven towns in thirteen different countries on four different continents, Pete puts on a stone in weight and does irrecoverable damage to his health and wallet in the pursuit of saloon bar enlightenment. On the way he meets a wild cast of bleary eyed eccentrics, from Irish beer archaeologists to American ‘extreme beer’ aficionados, and samples legendary local brews in heroic quantities, from New York to Tokyo, from Barcelona to Barnsley.

It's an epic challenge, a hilarious, life-changing, globe-trotting adventure to the heart of Beer. Buy it here.

Man Walks into a Pub is a book about beer and pubs. It's not a guide to finely crafted ales or the best traditional pubs that serve them - there are enough of those around already.

It tells the history of beer and pubs in Britain; of beer's hallowed roots as a gift from the gods to cheer us up, through to the last pint of Stella on a Friday night. And how the front room of a house with a big stick above the door evolved into gin palaces, working men's clubs and gastropubs.

It's a story that features a whole host of unlikely characters, including an Egyptian Goddess, John Noakes, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a Canadian bloke who invented toasters, a couple of goats, Louis Pasteur, obsessive monks, a bear in a yellow nylon jacket, and some spitfires.

It's like history, but a bit unsteady. It's a warped and distorted history of the country itself, through the bottom of a pint glass. Buy it here.