Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition Contributor(s): Davis, Marni (Author) |
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ISBN: 1479882445 ISBN-13: 9781479882441 Publisher: New York University Press OUR PRICE: $30.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Jewish - General - History | United States - 19th Century - History | United States - 20th Century |
Dewey: 363.410 |
Series: Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History |
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.7" W x 8.7" (0.80 lbs) 272 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Finalist, 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature from the Jewish Book Council Traces American Jews' complicated relationship to alcohol through the years leading up to and after prohibition From kosher wine to their ties to the liquor trade in Europe, Jews have a longstanding historical relationship with alcohol. But once prohibition hit America, American Jews were forced to choose between abandoning their historical connection to alcohol and remaining outside the American mainstream. In Jews and Booze, Marni Davis examines American Jews' long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement's rise and fall. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activity--the making and selling of liquor, wine, and beer--and reveals that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States. But prohibition's triumph cast a pall on American Jews' history in the alcohol trade, forcing them to revise, clarify, and defend their communal and civic identities, both to their fellow Americans and to themselves. |
Contributor Bio(s): Davis, Marni: - Marni Davis is Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University. |