For God, country and Coca-Cola

How did an innocuous soft drink, more than 99% sweetened water, come to be regarded as "the sublimated essence of all that America stands for"? For God, Country and Coca-Cola is a cultural, social, and economic history of America as seen through the green glass of a Coke bottle. And what a quintessentially American tale it is. Coca-Cola began humbly as a patent medicine amid the fervor and chaos of Reconstruction Atlanta. A shrewd marketeer saw its value as a beverage, and it rapidly grew through the Gilded Age to become the dominant consumer product of the American Century. The key to Coca-Co…