Harris Cooper Ph.D. - American History Through a Whiskey Glass: How Distilled Spirits, Domestic Cuisine, and Popular Music Helped Shape a Nation

Chapter 1

PREREQUISITES

The truth of history? A fable agreed upon.

Napoleon

A SOBERING ASSESSMENT OF HISTORY

How do you fashion trustworthy history when many of the actors, those people recounting events, were inebriated or breaking the law when the events occurred? Or, when history is conveyed on recipe cards and notebooks shared among friends and tinkered with by each? Or, when it is in a song, with borrowed lyrics and melodies, heard but rarely written down?

Napoleons assertion (he wasnt the first to make it) that history is myth is certainly correct in one sense. The reconstruction of past events frequently involves some informed imagination. And more so for the history of popular culture than most other narratives. The episodes involved in whiskey history, for example, often were clandestine, were acts of rebellion, or were carried out by people who were, well, maybe not as mentally sharp as they could be.

But the history of popular culture is much more than tales spun after a sip or two. Good accounts of history are the result of painstaking work, much to be admired. They help us understand today in the context of yesterday. An old proverb declares, History doesnt repeat itself, but it rhymes. Amen.

And then there was Winston Churchill. He liked to say (again, he certainly was not the first), History is written by the victors. True, sort of. Churchill was correct in that societiesand American society is no exceptionare filled with individuals, families, clans, work groups, churches, and other assemblages of people. This Matryoshka nesting doll of unique identities means each person will experience the same events in different ways. In Churchills time, the person who owned the printing press owned history. But there was more than one printing press and more than one voice interpreting events when the presses rolled.

THIS BOOK

American History Through a Whiskey Glass: How Distilled Spirits, Domestic Cuisine, and Popular Music Helped Shape a Nationis a rendition of history told through the lens of our countrys most distinctive products: bourbon and rye whiskey. But it is more than that; its purpose is to guide you in experiencingthe role alcohol, food, and music have played in the lives of common and uncommon Americans.