The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition Book

This book is an interesting read. One review put it best, "Scholarly and entertaining...The author succeeds in using one category of our material culture--drinking--as a window on the whole society. What we see is sometimes amusing and sometimes appalling..." The first chapter (a nation of drunkards) is very entertaining and the second and third wane a bit. Yet in the fourth (Whiskey feed) it picks back up as the author begins to delve into the root of the drinking problem for early Americans (Circa 1770's-1830's) which he defines as Anxieties. The Anxieties stem from a changing country that left many feeling uneasy and unsettled. Alcohol become the answer. Yet in later 19th century the imbibing turned into the race for material goods, and an almost obsessive nature in religious revival, which took the place of the anxiety reducer (alchohol) for the troubled citizens of the U.S.