The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet
- ISBN-10
- 0813548497
- ISBN-13
- 9780813548494
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-08-03
- Publisher
- Rutgers University Press
- Author
- Garrett Peck
Description
Spirits are all the rage today. Two-thirds of Americans drink, whether they enjoy higher priced call brands or more moderately priced favorites. From fine dining and piano bars to baseball games and backyard barbeques, drinks are part of every social occasion. In The Prohibition Hangover, Garrett Peck explores the often-contradictory social history of alcohol in America, from the end of Prohibition in 1933 to the twenty-first century. For Peck, Repeal left American society wondering whether alcohol was a consumer product or a controlled substance, an accepted staple of social culture or a danger to society. Today the legal drinking age, binge drinking, the neoprohibitionist movement led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Granholm v. Heald that rejected discriminatory curbs on wine sales, the health benefits of red wine, advertising, and other issues remain highly contested. Based on primary research, including hundreds of interviews with those on all sidesùclergy, bar and restaurant owners, public health advocates, citizen crusaders, industry representatives, and moreùas well as secondary sources, The Prohibition Hangover provides a panoramic assessment of alcohol in American culture. Traveling through the California wine country, the beer barrel backroads of New England and Pennsylvania, and the blue hills of Kentucky's bourbon trail, Peck places the concerns surrounding alcohol use within the broader context of American history, religious traditions, and governance. Society is constantly evolving, and so are our drinking habits. Cutting through the froth and discarding the maraschino cherries, The Prohibition Hangover examines the modern American temperament toward drink amid the $189-billion-dollar-a-year industry that defines itself by the production, distribution, marketing, and consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren't
By Garrett PeckEven in the city where the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, the party went on—a history of bootleggers and speakeasies in the nation’s capital.
-
Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C.
By Garrett PeckCapital Beer will answer all your questions in the endearing style of your history buff friend who you can’t take to museums (in a good way!).” —DCist “In brisk and lively prose Peck covers 240 years of local brewing history, from ...
-
Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits
By Stephanie SchorowFrom 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 ...
-
Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink!: 65 Cocktails to Protest America’s Most Outlandish Alcohol Laws
By C. Jarrett DieterleThanks to Prohibition and its 100-year hangover, some of the most outdated, bizarre, and laughably loony laws still on the books today center around alcohol and how we drink it. In New Mexico, $1 margaritas are illegal.
-
The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
By Lisa McGirr50 To some steelworkers, the selective police tactics were part and parcel of Jones & Laughlin's authoritarian policies. Ormond Montini, an Italianborn steelworker, said, “[P]eople who were close to the company ...
-
Drinking in America: Our Secret History
By Susan CheeverAfter Harding's death, Vice President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in. Coolidge was a quiet, restrained, abstemious Vermonter who didn't drink alcohol; his favorite beverage was a carbonated sugary concoction called Moxie.
-
Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America
By Edward BehrChronicles the Prohibition era in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933; and traces the rise of the Temperance movement, speakeasies, and gangsters including Pretty Boy Floyd, Lucky Luciano, and Al Capone.
-
Glass and Gavel: The U.S. Supreme Court and Alcohol
By Nancy MaveetyNoted legal expert Nancy Maveety has written the first book devoted to alcohol in the nation’s highest court, The US Supreme Court.
-
The Potomac River: A History & Guide
By Garrett PeckIn this book, Garrett Peck leads readers on a journey down the Potomac, from its first fount at Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its mouth at Point Lookout in Maryland.
-
Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Health
By Professor David NuttIn Drink?, neuropharmacology professor David Nutt takes a fascinating, science-based look at drinking to unpack why we should reconsider our favorite pastime.