Booze: A Distilled History
Booze is a history of Canadian drink and drinking from the European conquest to the present. Filled with photographs, ads, and cartoons, this multifaceted story features the liquor traffic, alcohol in Native communities, the law and prohibition, public drunkenness, the workingman’s club, bootlegging, alcoholism, and a wide array of watering holes.
“To write about booze is to enter into a minefield of controversy,” writes Heron, acknowledging the complexity of his subject. Booze is a work of engaging scholarship by one of Canada’s leading historians.
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Praise
Heron deftly weaves together the intersection of alcohol consumption with such issues as community recreation, the regulation of public morality, the growth of policing, the Canadian suffrage movement, and class and racial divides.
– Quill & Quire
Beer, booze cans, beverage rooms, bootleggers, Barleycorn, and Baby Duck: Craig Heron packs four centuries of Canadian tippling and temperance into one easy-to-open package. Booze: A Distilled History is an informative and accessible study of Canadians who take a drink and the other Canadians who wish they wouldn’t. Heron ably captures our national enthusiasm, ambivalence, and hypocrisy toward the demon drink.
– Nicholas Pashley, author of Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary
Booze is social history at its finest. The social significance of drinking, a cultural, economic, and everyday practice, is effortlessly revealed. As historical research, Heron weaves multiple primary and secondary sources together seamlessly.
– Just Labour
Craig Heron’s thoroughly enjoyable-and enjoyably thorough-romp through Canada’s boozey past is as approachably prose-worthy as it is an interconnected analysis of the social, economic, political, sexual, medical, racial, and cultural impact of alcohol on this country.
– activehistory.ca
A fun book for the serious Canadian drinker.
– The Globe & Mail
Like a good toastmaster, historian Craig Heron mixes wit and wisdom in Booze: A Distilled History…All good stuff to pull out at your next cocktail party.
– MacLean’s
Like a good toastmaster, historian Craig Heron mixes wit and wisdom in Booze: A Distilled History…All good stuff to pull out at your next cocktail party.
– MacLean’s
Well-written, soundly researched, and beautifully illustrated…A terrific contribution to the histories of working-class culture, masculinity, and alcohol.
– Left History
Heron deftly weaves together the intersection of alcohol consumption with such issues as community recreation, the regulation of public morality, the growth of policing, the Canadian suffrage movement, and class and racial divides.
– Quill & Quire
Contents
| Preface and Acknowledgements | |
| Chapter 1 | In Search of John Barleycorn |
| Chapter 2 | The Water of Life |
| Chapter 3 | Taking the Pledge |
| Chapter 4 | The Reign of King Alcohol |
| Chapter 5 | The Long Arm of the Law |
| Chapter 6 | Wet Voices |
| Chapter 7 | One Hell of a Farce |
| Chapter 8 | Trying Again |
| Chapter 9 | The Recreational Drug |
| Chapter 10 | Rediscovering the Alcoholic |
| Chapter 11 | The Elusive John Barleycorn |
| List of Abbreviations | |
| Notes | |
| Bibliography | |
| Index |
