Drinking in America

August 10, 2015
In this whimsical history, author Cheever (My Name Is Bill) examines four centuries of America’s dysfunctional relationship with booze. Her story opens with the Pilgrims landing at Cape Cod “because they were running out of beer” and ends with the ascension of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cheever focuses on the role that giggle juice played in central events of U.S. history, including the Revolutionary War, westward expansion, the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Red Scare. She also highlights important figures in the history of drinking, including John Adams (and his family), Ethan Allen, Ulysses Grant, and her own father, John Cheever. Cheever’s central observation is fascinating: “few historians even mention drinking and its effect... on events,” an oversight she strives to correct. Yet some of her suppositions feel weak: that the Revolutionary War might not have happened if the colonists hadn’t been such partyers; that the Civil War might have been lost if Grant’s drinking hadn’t been tolerated; that Kennedy might not have been assassinated if his Secret Service team hadn’t been so hungover. Cheever is at her most fascinating when she sticks to facts: for example, in 1820 the average consumption of alcohol was three times what it is today, and children were sent off to elementary school fortified by ”flip,” a mixture of fruit juice and grain alcohol. The melting pot, it seems, was also a mixing bowl.

July 15, 2015
A distinguished biographer and cultural historian offers a fascinating look at the place and function of alcohol throughout American history. Cheever (E.E. Cummings: A Life, 2014, etc.) begins with a compelling premise: that "drinking and taverns have been as much a part of American life as churches and preachers, or elections and politics." When the Pilgrims made their long and dangerous voyage to America in 1620, beer was crucial to their well-being; when it began to run out, beer became the reason why they landed in Massachusetts rather than Northern Virginia. George Washington owned and operated his own distillery. During his time as a commander of the Continental Army, he "helped his soldiers fight by getting them a little drunk," unwittingly beginning a tradition that wedded alcohol to military endeavors that continues to this day. Alcohol-and in particular, rum-also became tied to the Colonial economy through slavery. By the end of the revolutionary era, two distinct attitudes toward tippling had emerged: that it was "a gift from God" but that its result, drunkenness, was "a curse from the devil." While individuals began preaching temperance in the 1800s, alcoholism began to leave its ugly genetic legacy in many highly respected American families, including Cheever's own. The anti-alcohol crusades of the 19th century led to Prohibition in the 1920s. But rather than "make the country healthy...it made them sick" while increasing the crime it was supposed to eradicate. When drink became legal again under Franklin Roosevelt, writers such as Ernest Hemingway and the author's father, John Cheever, "made up for the generations before and after them" by drinking to excess while creating an enduring, and poisonous, link between writing and alcohol. As implicated as she is in the history of drinking in America, Cheever does not condemn it. Instead, she offers a colorful portrait of a society that, like her own family, has been indelibly shaped by its drinking habits. An intelligently argued study of our country's "passionate connection to drinking."

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October 1, 2015
American attitudes toward boozing, Cheever says, have oscillated like a pendulum, beginning in a swing toward toping when the Pilgrims landed because they were out of beer. Swilling burgeoned beyond population growth until, in the 1820s, the U.S. was the drunkest nation on earth. Then came the reverse swing, culminating in Prohibition, the criminal bad consequences of which sent public opinion back to the bottle. Now, thanks to the effectiveness of AA and MADD, the U.S. is again censorious and legally restrictive of drinking. An accomplished novelist and biographer, Cheever tells the back-and-forth history of her subject in a stream of stories about and observations by famous people, including colonial leaders, three generations of John Adams' family, Meriwether Lewis, and Ulysses S. Grant and other Civil War figures. This is all very readable, but there should be more. The chapter covering 18661919the upswing to Prohibitionis only three pages long; the WCTU and Carrie Nation are barely mentioned, the influential Prohibition Party isn't mentioned at all. Such short shrifting makes the chapter on sodden mid-twentieth-century authors seem tacked on.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2015

Cheever's work ranges from fiction to memoir to her recent E.E. Cummings: A Life. But here's a book she seems destined to write, as she has been forthright about the battle that both she and her father, John Cheever, have fought with alcohol. Moving from a tipsy George Washington to alcohol as ingrained social custom to its impact on health and health-care policy today; with a 35,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015

The premise of Cheever's (American Bloomsbury) latest is compelling--how has America's on-again, off-again obsession with alcohol affected some of the major turning points in the nation's history? And it's a fun journey to take with Cheever, whose breezy writing style is entertaining and informed by her own publicly acknowledged struggles with addiction and a famous alcoholic parent. However, it may be a tad too breezy. Cheever often asserts rather than persuades; her repeated speculations about the motivations of people long dead do not make an entirely convincing argument. Determined to see U.S. history through the lens of drink, that is indeed what she finds. Still, there are some real surprises here, including indications that John F. Kennedy's secret service detail had been drinking heavily the night before the assassination, which may have affected their reaction time, and that an important reason the pilgrims stayed in Plymouth, rather than venturing down to Virginia as planned, was the fear that the Mayflower would run out of beer on the journey home. VERDICT For those looking for an enjoyable survey of the subject but who are willing to overlook inconsistencies in the author's argument.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.