While I was at work yesterday, The Wife took a trip into Pittsburgh, to check out a couple of houses we were curious about and to stop at Half-Price Books for some new reading material. She found some cool stuff for her, and she brought home one cool thing for me: Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer.

It’s a cool book, a country-by-country guide to beers and beer styles specific to each area. The first edition of the book — the one The Wife found for me — was published in 1977, and it has one glaring omission: A lack of information about North American brewing.

The slight is glaring, but understandable. Most of the small, regional breweries in the U.S. had died by that time, leaving only the biggies: A-B, Miller, Pabst, Stroh’s, etc. And those guys, as is largely the case today, were content to make essentially the same beer, one that would be inoffensive and non-threatening, without all those weird flavors you find in those European beers.

And one they could sell by the truckload.

The regional breweries made it into the 60s, but most of them couldn’t survive past that point. And with precious few exceptions, craft brewers didn’t start showing up the late 80s or early 90s. The brewers who were taking a chance back then had to fight an uphill battle against an American public that thought drinking a Molson was adventurous — that’s part of the reason why it’s fairly miraculous that a little guy like our own Penn Brewing has survived for 21 years.

In the last decade, that’s changed a bunch. While The Wife and I sat on our porch, enjoying grilled bratwurst and a beautiful Memorial Day evening, we were drinking beer from — let’s see: Magic Hat, Troeg’s, Boulder, Brooklyn, Victory, Bell’s, Great Lakes and Goose Island — eight different breweries, all represented in our fridge. On Saturday, The Wife and I will escort Fred and Ethel to Penn’s annual microbrewery festival, which, I think, is hosting tasting sessions featuring 32 different breweries.

I know Mr. Jackson has updated his book since 1977; in fact, there have been several titles written since the 1988 version was published, a necessity if he’s going to keep up with the growth of craft brewing in this country. But I wonder what his first book would have been like if it was written in 2007, instead of 1977. I’m thinking the North American section would have been more than a page or two.

Our grandfathers grew up in a time when they probably were loyal to their local brewery. If they grew up in a decent-sized city, they likely had at least a couple to choose from. But we don’t have to lament the passing of the good old days, in this case.

Carly Simon/James Taylor, on “Anticipation”: These are the good old days.

Pittsburgh has its regional brewery, the maker of Iron City, still hanging on, albeit by a thread; it also has five smaller independent breweries — Penn, East End, Church Brew Works and North Country — and, I think, three chains that make their own beer in-house. And if that’s not enough, the state is slowly loosening its grip on Pennsylvania’s archaic liquor laws, giving us the opportunity to try new things from micros all over the region and the country.

If Mike wanted something different in 1977, he had to go to Europe to get it. I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you that there is plenty of variety right here at home 30 years later.