The Prohibition Hangover - book

The Prohibition Hangover Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet, by Garrett Peck (Rutgers University Press, 2009)


This is a truly interesting and worthwhile book for someone with an interest in the topic of alcohol in America, but for me, as a casual reader, it offers much more in the way of detail than I could easily assimilate. It certainly does trace the history of drinking in America from the beginning to the contemporary scene.

The major thrust of this work has to do with our continued ambivalence about alcohol and its effects. Even though Prohibition occurred and failed, as a society we have still not completely resolved this ambivalence, there are still groups of various kinds that attempt to regulate or prohibit alcohol use even though it is now well established as a normal behavior pattern for at least two-thirds of our population. This can be seen, for example, in the national stipulation that one must be twenty-one years of age to drink (a ruling brought about by pressure from several different temperance groups) even though you can be called upon as cannon fodder at eighteen.

The author reviews the different styles of drinking over time, the types of alcohol consumed, and brief histories of the development of whiskey, the beer and wine industries, the creation of cocktails, the changes in fashion from one type of drink to another at various times, and links these patterns to larger events of the time, immigration, the depression, and so on. It is all quite fascinating but not exactly what nowadays would be described as a quick “read” (I despise this current practice of converting verbs to nouns).

In colonial times the favorite drinks were rum and (hard) apple cider. After the revolution, Congress levied heavy taxes on imported molasses, the result being a switch to cheaper locally made whiskey made from corn. Cheap corn whiskey led the nation on a drinking binge that resulted in Prohibition for a time. Beer was of little importance at all until the great German immigrations of the 1840’s and the end of Prohibition. Although wine had been made early by people like George Washington, it only became of real importance with the immigration of Italians that began arriving in the 1880’s. It was not until the relative affluence of the 1950’s that distilled spirits and cocktails became fashionable.

Peck discusses all of these trends in some detail, including the processes involved in the making of these various alcoholic beverages. He explains the differences between different types of beer, bourbon, scotch, Irish, and other forms of whiskey, different wine varietals, and cites more mixed drinks and cocktails than you might have imagined existed. It is a pretty thorough and thoughtful job.

He also compares the positions of the three largest religious groups on the question of alcohol use: the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the United Methodist Church. I did not realize that wine was so fundamental to communion that it was allowed even during Prohibition, whereas some other faiths quickly substituted grape juice (that was more or less invented for just that purpose).There is also some discussion of the health effects of drinking, as well as the numerous groups who still advocate, if not outright Prohibition, at least certain restrictions on drinking. These people have been termed neoprohibitionists or even neo-puritans, and have gained strength since the 1980’s mostly as proponents against the social costs of alcohol. MADD is perhaps one of the best examples of this approach as they have never opposed drinking as such, but only that people should not drink and drive.

Probably the most interesting part of this book, for me at least, is the author’s discussion of teen-age drinking and the problem with the twenty-one year old legal age restriction. It seems quite clear that trying to keep teens from drinking is no more successful than Prohibition was, and perhaps is even less successful, as it seems to have become part of ordinary teen-age rebellion and leads to binge drinking and other forms of alcohol abuse. In countries like France and Italy where wine drinking is part of growing up and children are taught to drink, when and how, this is not such a problem.

In any case, Peck’s review of drinking laws in different states, the control of alcohol, hours of operation, locations where one can purchase alcohol, how alcohol can be transported, how it can be served, the various attitudes toward it on the part of different groups, and so on make it clear that the elimination of Prohibition has not settled our problems with this ancient, virtually ubiquitous beverage.