American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and the Making of the World's #1 BourbonISBN: 978-0-471-44407-7
Hardcover
264 pages
August 2003
This is a Print-on-Demand title. It will be printed specifically to fill your order. Please allow an additional 10-15 days delivery time. The book is not returnable.
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How does a sour mash corn whiskey brand go from being a Kentucky
family's "adjunct farming activity" to founding a corporation that
ships over five million cases worldwide each year? Pacult
(Kindred Spirits: The Spirit Journal Guide to the World's
Distilled Spirits and Fortified Wines) extensively researched
the story of the Beam family, which is just as much a 19th-and
20th-century American history. The young country's struggles with
slavery, Prohibition and war, its sociopolitical maturation and its
shift from the agricultural to an industrial economy all come into
play. A prolific spirits writer, Pacult has an expert's grasp on
the topic, which carries the book through its slow periods.
Upstanding citizens to a man, the Beams don't always make for
scintillating reading - no scoundrels, no scandals - and only Jim
Beam's grandson Booker Noe, the refreshingly blunt, six-foot-four,
360-pound former master distiller, emerges as a character with any
color. Trying to keep all the Beams straight might make readers
feel like they've just downed a few shots of the bourbon itself.
Most interesting is Pacult's examination of American popular
culture and its effect on the bourbon business: how bourbon became
déclassé in the 1970s, the venerable spirit losing out to
sexy newcomer vodka (and its inadvertent pitchman, James Bond), and
how scotch whiskey's rising popularity in the 1980s fueled the
production of bourbon's answer to the single-malt, the small-batch
bourbon. The book could use a few more colorful details, however,
such as the bit about temperance activist Carry Nation and her ax
attacks on taverns. (Aug.) (Publishers Weekly, June 16,
2003)
"...It's a fascinating glimpse of American political history..." (Drinks International, December 2003)