I began reading Daniel Okrent’s “LAST CALL: THE RISE AND FALL OF PROHIBITION” last night. It is quite the page turner and I recommend this book as highly as any in the past 20 years.
Here’s an excerpt:
…an English traveler marveled at the role liquor played in American lie: “I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink,” wrote Frederick Marryat in A Diary in America. “If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make an acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink because it is hot; they drink because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave.”
That passage from the Englishman was written in 1839
