Drink by Barr, Andrew - 1999: A Social History of America

New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1999. Hardcover. Blue board, black spine. Near fine, in near fine dust wrapper. 466 pages. "In this shrewd cultural history of drink in America, Andrew Barr considers the significance of alcohol, historically and socially, symbolic and real, in evolution of a nation born of a rebel spirit and intoxicated by liberty - and sometimes by run or raw whiskey, which the colonists preferred to their royally taxed British tea. While Americans have both asserted alcohol they have also, in Barr's perceptive historical view, put it to more insidious use: in suppressing native American populations in the country's expansion west, for instance, or in controlling acculturation of immigrants." Clean, crisp copy.