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A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops
Oxford University Press
July 2011
On Sale: June 21, 2011
336 pages
ISBN: 019973495X
EAN: 9780199734955
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
When George Washington bade farewell to his officers, he did
so in New York's Fraunces Tavern. When Andrew Jackson
planned his defense of New Orleans against the British in
1815, he met Jean Lafitte in a grog shop. And when John
Wilkes Booth plotted with his accomplices to carry out a
certain assassination, they gathered in Surratt Tavern. In America Walks into a Bar, Christine Sismondo recounts the
rich and fascinating history of an institution often
reviled, yet always central to American life. She traces the
tavern from England to New England, showing how even the
Puritans valued "a good Beere." With fast-paced narration
and lively characters, she carries the story through the
twentieth century and beyond, from repeated struggles over
licensing and Sunday liquor sales, from the Whiskey
Rebellion to the temperance movement, from attempts to ban
"treating" to Prohibition and repeal. As the cockpit of
organized crime, politics, and everyday social life, the bar
has remained vital--and controversial--down to the present. In 2006, when the Hurricane Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act
was passed, a rider excluded bars from applying for aid or
tax breaks on the grounds that they contributed nothing to
the community. Sismondo proves otherwise: the bar has
contributed everything to the American story.
In this heady cocktail of agile prose and telling anecdotes,
Sismondo offers a resounding toast to taprooms, taverns,
saloons, speakeasies, and the local hangout where everybody
knows your name.
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