Jonathan Yardley on 'Drink'

Young America unquestionably was a nation of boozers: "In 1810 federal statistics show that the six main whiskey-producing states together distilled twice as many gallons of whiskey per annum as there were people in America . . . . If statistics could predict the effect of drink on a population, by rights Americans should have been languishing en masse in emaciated heaps, their birthrate and life expectancy should have collapsed, and crime should have exploded."

None of this happened, but these excessive drinking habits led, perhaps inevitably, to the temperance movement, which has been a persistent presence in American life. It too has had its excesses, most catastrophically Prohibition, but organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have had a positive influence in encouraging, if not abstinence, moderation. "The forces of temperance were on the rise in the 1980s," Gately writes, "and better provided than ever before with medical and statistical ammunition to take on the demon drink. Moreover, a dry spirit permeated the age. American consumption was in decline . . . . Consumer tastes were changing. It was chic to look tanned, trim, and toned." That is true today, but my own observation suggests that the 20-something urban professionals of 2008 are more into alcohol than were their counterparts two decades ago.

In taking us from ancient Greece to MADD, Gately doesn't miss a beat, at least none that I can identify. From the Australian wine industry to boozing as a "male prerogative" in Japan; from Louis Pasteur's discovery in 1862 of the central role played by yeast in converting "the sugars in wine and beer to alcohol"; from the fad for absinthe and its eventual prohibition in many places; from the shift away from saloons to drinking at home; to the staggering popularity in Hong Kong of French Cognac -- it's all here, authoritatively and often amusingly recounted. As an example of the latter, I have special fondness for this paragraph:

"Other British writers followed [Oscar] Wilde west [in the 1880s], and all were equally enamored with the liquid hospitality they received in Pacific America. Rudyard Kipling, who found San Francisco a 'mad city -- inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of remarkable beauty,' was much taken by the Pisco punch, a drink then in vogue, whose principal ingredient was a clear Peruvian brandy. Sweet to the taste, yet highly potent, this ambrosia inspired Kipling to speculate on its composition: 'I have a theory it is compounded of cherubs' wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and fragments of lost epics by dead masters.' "

Enough. Since this review began by quoting Gately's opening words, let's end it with his closing ones: " Salud, Kan pei, Chin-chin, Prost, Yum sing, Skol, Slainte, À votre santé, Na zdrowie, The king o'er the water, or just plain Cheers!" ·

Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is yardleyj@washpost.com.