A must-have guide to the booming world of cider-what to drink, where it comes from, and where it's heading-by pioneering cider experts Craig Cavallo and Dan Pucci, "the hype-man cider is lucky to have" (Eater)

Cider today runs the gamut from sweet to dry, smooth to funky, made from apples but also from other fruits-and even hopped like beer. In American Cider, aficionados Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo give a new wave of consumers the tools to taste, talk about, and choose their ciders, along with stories of the many local heroes saving apple culture and producing new varieties. Like wine made from well-known grapes, ciders differ based on the apples they're made from and where and how those apples were grown. Combining the tasting tools of wine and beer, the authors illuminate the possibilities of this light, flavorful, naturally gluten-free beverage.

And cider is more than just its taste-it's also historical, as the nation's first popular alcoholic beverage, made from apples brought across the Atlantic from England. Pucci and Cavallo use a region-by-region approach to illustrate how cider and the apples that make it came to be, from the well-known tale of Johnny Appleseed-which isn't quite what we thought-to the more surprising effects of industrial progress and government policy. American Cider is a guide to enjoying cider, but even more so, it is a guide to being part of a community of consumers, farmers, and fermenters making the nation's oldest beverage its newest must-try drink.