Drinking in America : our secret history

In DRINKING IN AMERICA, best-selling author and historian Susan Cheever chronicles the many stages to our national love affair with booze, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has permeated and affected our nation's history from the drunkenness of George Washington to the current effect of alcohol abuse American health care.

Drinking is a cherished American custom--a way to celebrate and a way to grieve and a way to take the edge off.

But where is the line between a good time and a whirlwind of destruction, between a few glasses of wine and the kind of alcoholism that leads to violence of the body and of the soul.

Both a lively history and unflinching cultural investigation, DRINKING IN AMERICA unveils our torrid affair with alcohol, asking: When are we going to wake up and smell the whiskey?