Drinking History


Book Description

This volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America's diverse and complex beverage scene. Smith revisits colonization, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the temperance movement, Prohibition and its repeal and tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. The result is an intoxicating encounter with an often overlooked aspect of American culture and global influence.




Drinking Water


Book Description

An in-depth look at the changing approaches that environmentalists, governments, and the open market have taken to water through the lens of world history. When we turn on the tap or twist open a tall plastic bottle, we probably don’t give a second thought about where our drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to the glass is far more convoluted than we might think. In this revised edition of Drinking Water, Duke University professor and environmental policy expert James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time. He adds eye-opening, contemporary examples about our relationship to and consumption of water, and a new chapter about the atrocities that occurred in Flint, Michigan. Provocative, insightful, and engaging, Drinking Water shows just how complex a simple glass of water can be. “A surprising, delightful, fact-filled book.” —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel “Instead of buying your next twelve-pack of bottled water, buy this fascinating account of all the people who spent their lives making sure you’d have clean, safe drinking water every time you turned on the tap.” —Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet “Drinking Water effortlessly guides us through a fascinating world we never consider. Even for people who think they know water, there is a surprise on almost every page.” —Charles Fishman, bestselling author of The Big Thirst and The Wal-Mart Effect “Salzman puts a needed spotlight on an often overlooked but critical social, economic, and political resource.” —Publishers Weekly




Drinking Boston


Book Description

From the revolutionary camaraderie of the Colonial taverns to the saloons of the turn of the century; from Prohibition—a period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism—to a trail of nightclub neon so vast, it was called the “Conga Belt,” Drinking Boston is a tribute to the fascinating role alcohol has played throughout the city's history.




Drinking in America


Book Description

In Drinking in America, bestselling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Seen through the lens of alcoholism, American history takes on a vibrancy and a tragedy missing from many earlier accounts. From the drunkenness of the Pilgrims to Prohibition hijinks, drinking has always been a cherished American custom: a way to celebrate and a way to grieve and a way to take the edge off. At many pivotal points in our history-the illegal Mayflower landing at Cape Cod, the enslavement of African Americans, the McCarthy witch hunts, and the Kennedy assassination, to name only a few-alcohol has acted as a catalyst. Some nations drink more than we do, some drink less, but no other nation has been the drunkest in the world as America was in the 1830s only to outlaw drinking entirely a hundred years later. Both a lively history and an unflinching cultural investigation, Drinking in America unveils the volatile ambivalence within one nation's tumultuous affair with alcohol.




Drink


Book Description

A spirited look at the history of alcohol, from the dawn of civilization to the modern day Alcohol is a fundamental part of Western culture. We have been drinking as long as we have been human, and for better or worse, alcohol has shaped our civilization. Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to the present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, the Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, the slave trade, and the failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks-and the world's most famous drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.




Drunk


Book Description

An "entertaining and enlightening" deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization—and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised). While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Drunk shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication. From marauding Vikings and bacchanalian orgies to sex-starved fruit flies, blind cave fish, and problem-solving crows, Drunk is packed with fascinating case studies and engaging science, as well as practical takeaways for individuals and communities. The result is a captivating and long overdue investigation into humanity's oldest indulgence—one that explains not only why we want to get drunk, but also how it might actually be good for us to tie one on now and then.




Alcohol in America


Book Description

Alcohol is a killerâ€"1 of every 13 deaths in the United States is alcohol-related. In addition, 5 percent of the population consumes 50 percent of the alcohol. The authors take a close look at the problem in a "classy little study," as The Washington Post called this book. The Library Journal states, "...[T]his is one book that addresses solutions....And it's enjoyably readable....This is an excellent review for anyone in the alcoholism prevention business, and good background reading for the interested layperson." The Washington Post agrees: the book "...likely will wind up on the bookshelves of counselors, politicians, judges, medical professionals, and law enforcement officials throughout the country."




The School of Sophisticated Drinking


Book Description

Wherever and whenever people have been found talking, they have been found drinking: an age-old pastime with an equally storied history. Alcohol and civilization have developed in close quarters, sometimes supporting each other and sometimes getting in each other’s way. The School of Sophisticated Drinking, which began as an ongoing series of lectures at Berlin’s legendary Victoria Bar in 2003, traces the deep-seated lineage of drinking in the social, political, and even scientific developments of our culture. Appealing to both expert drinkers and novice barflies, each chapter delves into the sociopolitical significance of and technological innovations behind a familiar wine or spirit—brandy, vodka, whisky, rum, gin, tequila, and champagne—and shares plenty of tales of adventure, from the glamour of Hollywood and Broadway, to the tormented worlds of well-known writers, to the outbreak of wars and the unending struggle for economic and military power. The reader’s thirst for knowledge can be further quenched by trying any or all of the enticing cocktail recipes gathered at the end of the book.




I Am Drinking Stars!


Book Description

I¿m Drinking Stars tells the luxurious story of champagne over 400 years. Pivoting around one of champagne¿spioneers Dom Pérignon and the brand named after him, the book explores the delectable overlap between history andlegend. In late 17th-century France the modest abbey in the Champagne village of Hautvilliers collected its taxes from farmers in the form of grapes. The Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon was responsible for the production of wine at the abbey, and by refining his techniques over 47 years he anticipated the méthode champenoise and created in his own words, ¿the best wine in the world¿. Through Dom Pérignon¿s wine both the abbey and its region became famous.I¿m Drinking Stars traces Dom Pérignon¿s elaborate history through the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries: from the monk¿sinitial experiments, to Louis XV¿s hedonistic court at Versailles; from Marilyn Monroe¿s glamorous patronage of thechampagne, to Karl Lagerfeld¿s recent creations for the brand.




The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited


Book Description

When The Natural History of Alcoholism was first published in 1983, it was acclaimed in the press as the single most important contribution to the literature on alcoholism since the first edition of Alcoholic Anonymous’s Big Book. George Vaillant took on the crucial questions of whether alcoholism is a symptom or a disease, whether it is progressive, whether alcoholics differ from others before the onset of their alcoholism, and whether alcoholics can safely drink. Based on an evaluation of more than 600 individuals followed for over forty years, Vaillant’s monumental study offered new and authoritative answers to all of these questions. In this updated version of his classic book, Vaillant returns to the same subjects with the perspective gained from fifteen years of further follow-up. Alcoholics who had been studied to age 50 in the earlier book have now reached age 65 and beyond, and Vaillant reassesses what we know about alcoholism in light of both their experiences and the many new studies of the disease by other researchers. The result is a sharper focus on the nature and course of this devastating disorder as well as a sounder foundation for the assessment of various treatments.