Karen Abbott's page-turner teases with its central mystery, reaching its climactic final trial with a satisfying bang — though more on the politics of the time would have been a welcome layer.
By the turn of the 20th century, America's love affair with diamondback terrapin soup — a subsistence food turned gourmet fare — had left the turtle's population teetering. Booze ban to the rescue.
The end of a Depression-era alcohol has brewers happy to see the stuff go. "It was just a pain in the posterior, you know, for everyone," says one brewer.
It's muscadine season, and for writer Tanya Ballard Brown, the smell and taste are a throwback to childhood. But for others who grew up outside the South, these thick-skinned grapes are a mystery.
The Smithsonian's first brewing historian explores everything from immigration to urbanization through the lens of beer. And with the boom in microbrewing, she says beer's story has come full circle.
The Motor City was at the heart of most of the country's illegal liquor trade during Prohibition. Now, the city is embracing its identity as a major force in the artisanal craft whiskey market.
The book's outside cover boasted poems by a disgraced writer. But inside was page after page of handwritten recipes for alcohol — the secretly preserved know-how of a Prohibition-era doctor.
