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Intoxicating Pleasures

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In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Lisa Jacobson reveals, alcohol’s respectability and mass market success were neither sudden nor assured....
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  • October 29, 2024
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In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Lisa Jacobson reveals, alcohol’s respectability and mass market success were neither sudden nor assured. It took a world war and a battalion of public relations experts and tastemakers to transform wine, beer, and whiskey into emblems of the American good life. Alcohol producers and their allies—a group that included scientists, trade associations, restaurateurs, home economists, cookbook authors, and New Deal planners—powered a publicity machine that linked alcohol to wartime food crusades and new ideas about the place of pleasure in modern American life. In this deeply researched and engagingly written book, Jacobson shows how the yearnings of ordinary consumers and military personnel shaped alcohol’s cultural reinvention and put intoxicating pleasures at the center of broader debates about the rights and obligations of citizens. 
 
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Price: $95.00
Pages: 398
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Series: California Studies in Food and Culture
Publication Date: October 29, 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520401099
Format: Hardcover
REVIEWS Icon
"An excellent addition to any library of distilled spirits, wine and beer."

"Jacobson begins her important book by characterizing the changing public image of alcoholic beverages as a prime example of 'troublesome commodities' undergoing 'dramatic cultural reinventions'."

"This volume is an essential read and represents the new, key text in understanding the legacy of Prohibition and the modern meanings of alcohol in America. Vital for food scholars and social and business historians alike, it explains how in shedding its connotations of evil, alcohol, for all its intoxicating properties, became pleasurable."



"The book will be of interest to food historians, political scientists, 'Beeronomics' scholars, and those who simply enjoy the pleasure of curling up with a good book...and a good drink. Cheers!"



"Intoxicating Pleasures is a must for historians of alcoholic beverages and American social and business historians of the 20th century. . . . It is well written and engaging enough to be of interest to non-historians with an interest in the subject."

Lisa Jacobson is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE. CHARTING ALCOHOL’S PATH TO REDEMPTION
1 The Potent Politics of Weak Brews
2 A New Deal for Alcohol?
3 Fermented Beverages and the Gospel of Moderation
4 Spiritous Beverages and the Muddled Meanings of Moderation

PART TWO. THE POLITICS OF PLEASURE
5 Beer Goes to War
6 Whiskey, Weapons, and the Wartime State
7 Wine and Culinary Innovation on the Kitchen Front
8 Rank Privilege: The Politics of Intoxicating Pleasures in the US Military

Epilogue: The Power and Limits of Reinvention

Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index