Starting this thread to list and discuss literature of cultural history of potential interest. These are books that might directly apply to bars and bartenders, or they are adjacent and fill in context.
I’ll start:
I recently completed Tropicana Nights: The Life And Times Of The Legendary Cuban Nightclub (2005), by Rosa Lowinger and Ofelia Fox (the widow of the Tropicana’s owner/developer in the 1950s). More detail than I probably needed, but the book held my interest and turned out to also present an interesting angle on 1958 revolution.
Another I read a while back is Gilded City: Scandal and Sensation in Turn-of-the-Century New York (2000), by M. H. Dunlop. Topics: the Cornelia Martin wedding and Bradley-Martin Ball; the French Ball, Trilby, the salon art period including those at the Hoffman House, with mention of the National Police Gazette; the “studio style” fashion for filling your house with exotic crap to impress visitors, exemplified by William Merritt Chase, orientalism; Infanta Eulalie of Spain, the Duc de Veragua, the World’s Columbia Expo, royalty/title/class/fraud, the illusion of prosperity, slumming tours; nympholepcy/pedophilia and child prostitution (men with “proclivities”), Stanford White, “American Girl”, Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, the Seeley dinner at Sherry’s and subsequent trial, Little Egypt, Minnie Renwood (Trilby again); George Roeth’s shooting into Delmonico’s (26th St location), Camille Rheinhardt’s personal seige of John D. Rockefeller’s 54th St residence, poverty/desperation/panic/“insanity”, urban sociology/intensity/pressure, Dr. John D. Quackenbos, remedies of diet and drugs, cocaine; fashions for dead animals and parts (furs, feathers, taxidermied birds, cats), cruelty, the Midnight Band of Mercy, SPCA, Central Park Zoo, Tip the elephant.
I love love love “Rum Punch and Revolution” by Peter Thompson. In the early 18th century, Pennsylvania was the “best poor man’s country,” as citizens enjoyed a financial, political, and social egalitarianism unequaled in the colonies. But the latter third of the century produced growing financial inequality and increasingly diversified patterns of tavern-going, and ironically these distinctions were viewed through a moral lens given that they were based on outdated economic circumstances. Really granular economic data about alcohol pricing and licensing, and great stories about tavern shenanigans, and a telling perspective on Philadelphia’s cultural values.
Another favorite is “Domesticating Drink,” by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Women leveraged their authority in the domestic domain to warn of the dangers of alcohol and make gains in the temperance and suffrage movements, and as they did so alcohol migrated from the male-gendered tavern space into the shared spaces of the home and restaurant.
Malort: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit by Josh Noel. Besides the history of the spirit, it deals with ethnic group contributions to drinking, Sasha Petraske and the Speakeasy revolution that migrated from NYC to Chicago, and the cultures of consuming bitter things and drinks as cultural bonding and heritage. Mind you, I’m only 60% done with the book.
The Cocktail Parlor: How Women Brought the Cocktail Home by Nicola Nice. While history and the press recorded drinking in bars made by mostly men, it missed where a lot of drinking was occurring – in the home and by women. A great cultural overview of garden parties, subservience in entertaining for one’s husband, liberation, and the recipes that were being drank when no reporter was around.
Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits by Aaron Goldfarb. Looking back at history through the eyes of collector that hits on consumer taste changes, contemplation of life and your own passing, and history.
For anyone who has by some chance picked up a reading knowledge of French, I highly recommend Didier Nourrisson’s 1990 Le buveur du XIXe siècle. This is a remarkably intelligent book about how the patterns and culture of alcohol changed in France during the 19th century, full of interesting insights (e.g., how distillation follows industrialization) but also written with verve and an eye for the telling anecdote and the memorable fact. His discussion, for example, of popular calvados-drinking in Normandy, includes an invaluable and hilarious list of all the nicknames for the various ways the stuff was consumed. And they were indeed various–some used it to replace the water with which they made their morning coffee. Cool book.
I’ll second that one. Everything I’ve read by Nourrisson is great. Strongly recommend Crus et cuites, Histoire du buveur too. It basically follows the approach of the one @Splificator recommends but applied to French history, not just to that one century. Obviously not as in depth but full of fun facts. Au péché mignon : Histoire des femmes qui consomment jusqu’à l’excès is also great: he looks at attitudes towards French women (over)consuming alcohol over the centuries.
Just finished Paul J. Vanderwood’s “Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort” (2010). The resort in question is the short-lived Agua Caliente (1928–1934), in Tijuana. The book is a reasonably comprehensive rise and fall history of Agua Caliente and its founders, framed by the saga of a heist-gone-wrong where some small time crooks tried to steal cash being moved from the resort to a San Diego bank. As a whole, the story draws in the entire border region of California, Arizona and Mexico, as well as the national politics of both countries. Indeed, almost everyone in the story is a crook of one sort or other. Held my interest.
While there’s not a great deal about drinks in the book—gambling was Agua Caliente’s raison d’être—drinking was also a huge draw because of Prohibition in the USA.