Wow! I absolutely love this book!

Honestly, this is my new favorite book. I loved the author’s frank writing style and sense of humor. I never new the history of alcohol was so extensive- or so misogynistic.
I’m definitely buying this book for my personal collection for my future kids to reAd.

This book has a lot of promise. The author has a really fun girlfriendy tone while telling the story, so you very quickly feel connected to her. I highly recommend reading the footnotes for more places where she shows her voice.

One word of caution though for people coming to this book looking for just wit, there is a lot of non-fiction almost textbooky information. I really wanted this to be a fun book with information about different spirits or cocktails and their origin stories that I could put on my bar, but this isn’t that kind of book.

She does a great job showing the role women play in the world. Though in some places the book does drag a bit. I found myself unfortunately skimming sections because my eyes were glazing over a bit with the tremendous level of detail shared and the number of anecdotes in each chapter.

The biggest fault I found was in some chapters she jumped around the world without warning and then returns to the main focus of the chapter. It can be a touch confusing trying to figure out how the smaller stories relate into the main topic.

Unfortunately, I needed to put the book down so many times to let my brain rest from all of the jumping and absorb the significant amount of information presented that by the end of the book I was just so ready for it to be over that I almost DNF’ed this one after I was almost 3/4 of the way through it. The promise of Carrie Bradshaw and the cosmo kept me reading until the end though.

If I were in the alcohol industry, this would be a really interesting book, it reminded me a lot of Moneyball for baseball. If you’re looking for a fun book about how women influenced drinking culture and the process of creating alcohol, this isn’t the book for you. But if you want a deep knowledge on the history of women’s role in the alcohol industry, you’ll love this.

Just what it says on the box: a history of the women who made alcohol and who drank alcohol throughout history. Loads of interesting nuggets written in a breezy style that keeps you skimming along easily. The perfect pairing with a beach towel and a nice cocktail.

One quibble - the book is arranged chronologically, with each chapter covering a particular time period. Within those chapters O'Meara covers several topics, but skips around between stories, so you're reading about the widow Cliquot in France, then hopping over to Africa to read about beer makers, then back to France, and so forth. Maybe in the finished book there will be some visual clues to break everything up? But it was a bit confusing in the digital copy.