Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America From Demon Rum To Cult Cabernet (09 Edition)

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 sides--clergy, bar and restaurant owners, public health advocates, citizen crusaders, industry representatives, and more--as 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.

Multi-city author tour, e-marketing campaign

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. Based on primary research, including hundreds of interviews, Garrett Peck provides a panoramic assessment of alcohol in American culture and history.

Garrett Peck is a freelance journalist who has written mostly within the alcohol industry trade circles. Based in Washington, D.C., he also regularly conducts tours of historic sites that hold a significant place in the temperance movement in and around the district.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Noble Experiment

Chapter 2: So What Are We Drinking?

Chapter 3: Whiskey and Rye

Chapter 4: Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer

Chapter 5: The Golden Age of Wine

Chapter 6: The Supreme Court Decides

Chapter 7: Alcohol and Your Health

Chapter 8: What Would Jesus Drink?

Chapter 9: Beating the Temperance Drum

Chapter 10: Not until You're Twenty-one

Conclusions

Sources

Index