America Walks Into a Bar
by Christine Sismondo
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Jul 01 2011 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
Dear Editor/Producer,
There is a reason the pub sitcom Cheers ran for 11 seasons; Americans have always appreciated the camaraderie a local watering hole offers. Whether it's a political group meeting at the tavern to organize behind a cause, co-workers engaging in an after-office-hours drink/gripe, or a lonely soul looking to chat with a bartender, bars have forever been defined by a sense of community. So how did this institution, which has simultaneously been embraced and criticized, become such a central part of American life?
In AMERICA WALKS INTO A BAR: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops (Oxford | July 2011) Christine Sismondo traces the tavern from England to New England, and through the twentieth century. She discusses bars' tumultuous pasts with repeated struggles over licensing, Sunday liquor sales, and Prohibition. In addition, she explains how the bar has been an integral part of political history. For example, when George Washington bade farewell to his officers, he did so in New York's Fraunces Tavern and when Andrew Jackson planned his defense of New Orleans against the British in 1815, he met Jean Lafitte in a grog shop. Bars have also been the focal point of organized crime, which Sismondo informs have made them a controversial component of society. In this cocktail of anecdotes and historical points, Sismondo offers a resounding toast to taprooms, taverns, saloons, speakeasies, and the local hangouts.
Where everybody knows your name...
Justyna
Justyna Zajac
212.743.8337| justyna.zajac@oup.com
Christine Sismondo is a writer and lecturer in Humanities at York University in Toronto. She has written numerous books and articles about film, literature, drinking, and vice, including Mondo Cocktail, a narrative history of cocktails.
AMERICA WALKS INTO A BAR
A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops,
by Christine Sismondo, will be published in hardcover by Oxford University Press in July 2011
($24.95 | 320 pages |ISBN13: 9780199734955).
Available Editions
| ISBN | 9780199734955 |
| PRICE | |
