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A History of the American Spirit
Popular history with a whiskey-soaked edge: Bourbon is Dane Huckelbridge's artful and imaginative biography of our most well-liked, and at times controversial, spirit, that is also a witty and entertaining chronicle of the United States itself.
Few commodities figure as prominently or as intimately in the story of the nation as bourbon whiskey. Its primary ingredient was discovered by Christopher Columbus. Its recipe was perfected on the Western frontier. In 1964, Congress passed a resolution declaring it to be a "distinctive product of the United States." First brewed by pioneers in in the backwoods of Appalachia, bourbon whiskey has become a modern multi-billion dollar international industry today. As Dane Huckelbridge reveals, the Kentucky spirit—the only liquor produced from corn is the American experience, distilled, aged, and sealed in a bottle.
In telling the story of bourbon, Huckelbridge takes us on a lively tour across three hundred years. Introducing the fascinating people central to its creation and evolution, he illuminates the elusive character of the nation itself. Interweaving the development of bourbon to America's own rise, his engaging and unique study is popular history at its best, offering a lively and informative look at our past through a hilariously thick pair of whiskey-bottle glasses.
"[A] raucously entertaining history of the spirit...Drink deeply from Huckelbridge's free-flowing stories, and you'll soon be besotted with the honeyed history of bourbon." - Publishers Weekly
"A mirthful, erudite appreciation of bourbon and its striking history... Huckelbridge knows his bourbon... A snappy history of the popular spirit's rise and continued ascent." - Kirkus
"A wonderfully entertaining look at American history as seen through the lens of Kentucky's famous brown water. A must read." - Bill Samuels Jr., President Emeritus of Maker's Mark Distillery and 4th generation Kentucky bourbon maker
Made from New World corn and Old World techniques, Bourbon is the American Spirit. Dane Hucklebridge takes readers on an intoxicating romp through the history of bourbon from its humble colonial origins to its craft-driven current revival." - Edward J. Larson, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History
This information about Bourbon was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Frank Guia
Dane Huckelbridge hails from the American Middle West. He graduated from Princeton University in 2001; since then, his fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of magazines and journals, including Tin House, The New Republic, and The New Delta Review. His first book, a cultural history of bourbon, was published in 2014, and he has a second historical work scheduled for 2016. Castle of Water is his first novel. He is married and lives in New York City, although he travels to France with his wife whenever he can.
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