Alcohol and Drugs History Society

American Jews, the liquor business, and "Judah Beam"

A lengthy and color illustrated blog entry by Stephen J. Gertz, available here, begins with a bit of ephemera (the 1954 Joseph Jacobs Handbook of Jewish Words and Expressions. For Use by anybody calling on the Jewish trade ... for making friends with Jewish merchants) and proceeds to tell a little known story of American Jews in the liquor business, a story that the author knows well as his family was prominent in it. It begins with the National Brokerage Company of Chicago, a trader in (liquor) warehouse receipts and its take over during National Prohibition of Jim Beam which "became, for all intents and purposes, Judah Beam." Parallel to the Bronfman family buying up Canadian distilleries, Lewis S. Rosenstiel purchased Schenley in Pennsylvania and then other distilleries.  "By the mid-1930s, Jews controlled the distilled spirits industry in the U.S., completely responsible for its finance, sales and marketing."  Until the post-WWII boom, liquor stores typically were owned by small Jewish merchants.  Although Gertz directs his blog principally at collectors, his blog entry will interest historians of whiskey in the decades following the enactment of the Volstead Act.

Gertz, an antiquarian book dealer, specializes in erotic literature, the  literature of drugs, and sometimes the two entwined.

Catholic temperance societies in Toronto in the 1870s (article)

This is an old but neglected article available as a PDF text on the Internet.

Brian P. Clarke, "'Heroic Virtue': The Catholic Temperance Crusade in Toronto during the 1870s," CCHA, Historical Studies 54 (1987): 57-67.  Irish Catholic women joined parish confraternities but not Irish Catholic men who made the tavern the center of their social life.  Priests hoped to break the grip of the tavern with a temperance crusade.

Should the clergy, or the church members, drink?

For some denominations, this question is unsettled. Read the article here in one of Christianity Today's  eleven magazines - Leadership Journal.  Christianity Today International was started by Billy Graham over 50 years ago. That site also has a blog entry on the same issue here .

Southern white evangelicals and prohibition (book reviews)

Book reviews of Joe L. Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, by Barclay Key in Alabama Review 62/1 (January 2009): 63-65; and Arthur Remillard, in Church History 77/4 (December 2008): 1090-1093. 

Abstinence in America (book review)

Geoff Pevere reviews Jessica Warner, The Day George Bush Stopped Drinking: Why Abstinence Matters to the Religious Right, here.

Evangelism and prohibition in east Texas, 1903-1919 (article)

Jerry Hopkins, "No Guarantee: Mordecai F. Ham, Evangelism and Prohibition Meetings in Texas, 1903-1919," East Texas Historical Journal 44/2 (2006): 44-51.

Chocolate in Mesoamerica (book)

Cameron L. McNeil, ed., Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao [Maya Studies] (University Press of Florida, 2007).  

Table of Contents:

Introduction : The biology, antiquity, and modern uses of the chocolate tree (Theobroma cacao L.) / Cameron L. McNeil -- Cacao and its relatives in South America : an overview of taxonomy, ecology, biogeography, chemistry, and ethnobotany / Nathaniel Bletter and Douglas C. Daly -- The domestication and distribution of Theobroma cacao L. in the neotropics / Nisao Ogata, Arturo Gómez-Pompa, and Karl A. Taube -- The jaguar tree (Theobroma bicolor Bonpl.) / Johanna Kufer and Cameron L. McNeil -- The determination of cacao in samples of archaeological interest / W. Jeffrey Hurst -- The history of the word for 'cacao' and related terms in ancient Meso-America / Terrence Kaufman and John Justeson -- Brewing distinction : the development of cacao beverages in formative Mesoamerica / John S. Henderson and Rosemary A. Joyce -- Cacao in ancient Maya religion : first fruit from the maize tree and other tales from the underworld / Simon Martin -- The language of chocolate : references to cacao on classic Maya drinking vessels / David Stuart -- The social context of Kakaw drinking among the ancient Maya / Dorie Reents-Budet -- The use and representation of cacao during the classic period at Copan, Honduras / Cameron L. McNeil, W. Jeffrey Hurst, and Robert J. Sharer -- Cacao in greater Nicoya : ethnohistory and a unique tradition / Larry Steinbrenner -- The good and evil of chocolate in colonial Mexico / Manuel Aguilar-Morena -- The Itza Maya control over cacao : politics, commerce, and war in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Laura Caso Barrera and Mario Aliphat F. -- Cacao production, tribute, and wealth in sixteenth-century Izalcos, El Salvador / William R. Fowler -- Soconusco cacao farmers past and present : continuity and change in an ancient way of life / Janine Gasco -- Traditional cacao use in modern Meosamerica / Cameron L. McNeil -- Cacao, gender, and the northern Lacandon god house / Timothy W. Pugh -- Food for the rain gods : cacao in Ch'orti' ritual / Johanna Kufer and Michael Heinrich -- Cacao in the Yukatek Maya healing ceremonies of Don Pedro Ucán Itza / Betty Bernice Faust and Javier Hirose López -- From chocolate pots to Maya gold : Belizean cacao farmers through the ages / Patricia A. McAnany and Satoru Murata.

Temperance in Baltimore, 1829-1870 (dissertation)

Patricia Dockman Anderson, "'By Legal or Moral Suasion Let Us Put It Away': Temperance in Baltimore, 1829-1870" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 2008). Includes Roman Catholics, free blacks, and Jews, as well as the standard temperance reformers (white Protestants).

Margaret Mehring and WCTU (thesis)

Samuel P. Piazza, "Margaret Mehring: The Making of a Reformer--Personal Tragedy, War and Religion" (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 2008).  Margaret Mehring (b. 1847) and WCTU.

Christian sabbath, liquor, racial amagamation, and democracy in antebellum America (dissertation)

Kyle G. Volk, "Majority Rule, Minority Rights: The Christian Sabbath, Liquor, Racial Amalgamation, and Democracy in Antebellum America" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2008).