Departments

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alcohol

  • SOURCE: Aeon
    9/6/2022

    Ken Burns Got "Prohibition" Wrong

    by Mark Lawrence Schrad

    Burns largely accepts an individualistic and libertarian narrative of prohibition as a misbegotten campaign of moral scolds, missing the reformist, egalitarian, and humane demands of the movement and the exploitative nature of the "liquor traffic" it sought to disrupt. 

  • SOURCE: Going Medieval
    8/18/2022

    On Beer, or, Why Chicks Rock

    by Eleanor Janega

    The history of brewing in medieval Europe reflects on the present in interesting ways from the inside of the pub. 

  • SOURCE: Reason
    4/18/2022

    The History of Saloons Helps Understand the Social Harm of the Pandemic

    "In the century and a half after the founding, saloons continued to be a key social institution, places of business, leisure, and community for many men—until Prohibition wiped them out, destroying in one fell stroke the cultural and economic infrastructure they had long provided."

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/1/2022

    The Truth About Prohibition

    by Mark Lawrence Schrad

    American historians have often identified Prohibition with a coalition of social reformers, nativists and religious fundamentalists. Looking at the international temperance and prohibition movement tells a different story of a fight against exploitation of workers and minority groups through addiction.

  • SOURCE: Nursing Clio
    10/14/2021

    Manhood, Madness, and Moonshine

    by Dillon Carroll

    Today's concern for "deaths of despair" among white Americans isn't unprecedented; a wave of alcoholism and temperance advocacy after the Civil War highlighted the relationship between social unsettlement, substance abuse and social reformism.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    9/17/2021

    The Hard Seltzer Trend Echoes the 19th Century Craze for Lager

    "Lagers were introduced by a wave of German immigrants pouring in from Europe. To uninitiated Americans, lager was simply weird. But for Germans-turned-German-Americans, the beer was inseparable from the culture of its consumption."

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/16/2021

    America Has a Drinking Problem

    The shifting social setting of American alcohol consumption, as much as its volume, is cause for concern. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/29/2020

    Mr. DeMille, I’m Ready for Your Booze Stash

    A look inside the subculture of "dusty hunters," collectors of old-stock liquor. Usually this means finding discontinued brands in the back of a liquor store, but sometimes it means buying a legendary film director's supply. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    8/4/2020

    Let Us Drink in Public

    Many modern open container laws derive from previous “public drunkenness” and “vagrancy” ordinances that criminalized not just alcoholism, but also poverty and homelessness.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5/23/2020

    The Many Faces of the ‘Wine Mom’

    Historian Lisa Jacobson explains that the "Wine Mom" meme is rooted in gender and middle class norms regulating women's obligations to their children (and women's desire for freedom from them).

  • SOURCE: University of Washington History Department
    4/15/2020

    In Memoriam: William Rorabaugh

    William Rorabaugh, known to his colleagues as Bill, was a popular teacher and prolific scholar whose legacy will be felt for many years to come.

  • 5/7/19

    A Bloody Mary Bar and a Barroom Full of Fun

    by Bruce Chadwick

    The story includes the history of the Bloody Mary, Irish Coffee. Champagne and the Bellini, brunch drinks, told in spirited, light hearted songs presented by a seasoned and a deliciously giddy cast.