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Cargando... Drinking in America: Our Secret Historypor Susan Cheever
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Not a deep history, but a broad overview on how America was influenced by drinking habits of its people. This book begins with the Mayflower's arrival (beer was served at the first Thanksgiving. Something we certainly didn't learn in elementary school), touches upon the issues leading to Prohibition, and towards the end discusses individuals, who happened to be alcoholics, who shaped American history (examples include Presidents Grant and Nixon). This book includes a lot of fascinating tidbits. For instance, the breed of apples Johnny Appleseed planted were intended for hard cider, not for snacking on. I felt that the sections that covered historical events were stronger than when the author discussed historical people. The author is a recovered alcoholic, as was her dad John Cheever, so at times she was more subjective than necessary -- and while not outright stating that alcohol was evil, she was a tad bit preachy a couple times. With that caveat, I would recommend this book as a good overview on the subject -- it made me want to read more about Prohibition. A well written book surveying the history of drinking in America that offers insights both pro and con on our country's bout with bottle over several centuries. Cheever writing from an alcoholic background looks at a number of historical topics in our past that sheds light on how drinking influenced events that we take for granted and that traditional historians exclude some of the finer details. There is much here that I certainly was not aware of and it gave me quite a different perspective on how some of these events and how our culture at large were greatly influenced by our relationship with alcohol and certainly some of the key individuals and their relationship with the same. Definitely a history lesson well worth the time and thought. The book flows through our history, no pun intended, and may even give us some insight into our own relationship with this influential liquid. My blog post about this book is at this link. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)394.1Social sciences Customs, Etiquette, Folklore General Customs Eating, drinking, using drugsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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tl;dr, not the worst book, but probably not in my top 10 for 2016. ( )