The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol

Burns, a self-described""non-academic historian"" and host of Fox News Watch, takes readers on a romp with boozers and teetotalers in this high-spirited history of alcohol in America. Prohibition comes and goes throughout his narrative but tippling,""the first national pastime,"" is constant. Jefferson had his""three glasses a day,"" Hancock his beer, and the Supreme Court Justices their madeira. For the colonists, Burns writes, alcohol served as""aspirin and penicillin, cortisone, and antibiotic, all rolled in one--the first wonder drug."" And so, though Doctor Benjamin Rush tried the threat of""spontaneous combustion"" as early as 1772, real strides toward prohibition had to wait until 1851, when Neal Dow's efforts led to Maine state law. Burns takes his readers through the transformations and reversals of the Civil War, Prohibition and its repeal, pausing whenever a good story comes his way and punctuating his observations with bursts of comedy club humor. Best of all are his lively portraits of mostly-forgotten historical figures, such as Diocletian Lewis, who, with his mother Delecta, formed the Visitation Bands, which gathered outside barrooms""communicating their displeasure to the heavens."" In spite of the Temple University Press imprimatur, Burns offers up no pretensions to heavy scholarship. Academic historians and scholars will likely flee at his declaration that""there are fictions that make up for the inaccuracy of their details by the truth of their general impressions."" But readers who like informative fun need not be so straight-laced--there are plenty of solid facts here and the Emmy-winning author clearly knows how to spin a good yarn.