Drinking in America

Our Secret History

By: Susan Cheever

Narrated by: Barbara Benjamin Creel

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

In Drinking in America, best-selling 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 17th to the 20th 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.

©2015 Susan Cheever (P)2015 Hachette Audio

very well written but focuses on well known people

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

..Secret history of celebs. My fault, I think I was looking for something about bootleggers rather than a history of the drinkers who are famous. I consider then to be a small effect of drinking in America.

A Nation of Drunks-But Hey, Whats Wrong WithThat

Would you try another book from Susan Cheever and/or Barbara Benjamin Creel?

Maybe after a couple of drinks.

Would you recommend Drinking in America to your friends? Why or why not?

I would recommend it, but it is a topic that may not appeal to most readers though.

What about Barbara Benjamin Creel’s performance did you like?

Kind of neutral. Nothing stood out as either great or poor.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

This book is not suited to be a movie. Mostly American history based around our obsession with alcohol.

Any additional comments?

A little dry for my taste. No pun intended.

Some what liberal interpretation of history.

Taking drinking in context to historical events, this author opens reader's eyes to a part of history not taught in schools...but it should be.

Informative!

It was a neat little book on a circumscribed topic. I’m glad I read it. I wish it didn’t skip around in time, though.

Informative

Good listen. The book is full of information and from a perspective that seems seldom seen.

Enlightening

I was unaware of the part drinking has played in the history of the United States - I am not sure it was as influential as the author declares, but I learned much from her account.

A story about drinking and politics not America

I had really high hopes for this book but the author is clearly liberal and pushes that narrative the entire book. I thought the very beginning was ok but as it progressed it’s just clearly stories about political leaders who she did not like being drunk. Everybody knows politicians get drunk behind closed doors on both sides of the isle, these are stories of one side of that. A lot of what is in the book is also just speculation and not based on hard facts. All in all I would not recommend.

meh

A 30 minute YouTube video would've accomplished the same thing.
Last Call is much better on this topic

Revisionist history at its worst

Would you try another book from Susan Cheever and/or Barbara Benjamin Creel?

I applaud Cheever for overcoming her addiction; however, she is clearly not an historian. She approaches American history and specifically watershed moments from the perspective of alcoholism. She proposes heavy-handed reinterpretations of these events while offering scarcely more evidence than the fact that brandy was in the room. She implies, for example, that the Pilgrims on the Mayflower landed in Plymouth rather than their planned destination (near present-day NYC) because were ill-prepared for the New World because they were drunk, not because the waters around Long Island were dangerous, nor because the pilgrims were city-dwelling shop owners who wouldn't have known the first thing about building homes and infrastructure from scratch. The book is riddled with this kind of sloppy research. Very disappointed.

Don't bother-

I thought I was getting a history of drinking. while there were some interesting facts, what this book does is allow the author to speculate and draw loose conclusions on why certain events happened. She all but blames the assassination of President Kennedy on the drinking of Secret Service men. She also uses this book as a forum for railing on conservatives as well as Nixon and Bush. I was very disappointed.