Book Review: Whiskey Women
One of the more problematic challenges of historical books is their inability to provide truly holistic, objective testimony on actual events. There will always be omitted perspectives, conflicting stories and incomplete narratives. Facts and figures may contradict oral histories and withering records may not fill in cracks the way one would hope. When it comes to the history of alcohol, many of these books share the deficit of not recognizing the plentiful contributions women have made over the centuries to the history of drinking. Perhaps this can be attributed to the lack of consistent information needed to construct a narrative; perhaps this is due to the male-dominated arena of alcohol-oriented historical non-fiction. Whatever the case, there’s plenty of attribution to go around at the table.
Which is why Fred Minnick’s Whiskey Women makes for such a crucial piece of historical documentation: It remedies many of these errors through incredibly thorough scholarship. He takes the reader from the earliest of recorded history in Egypt all the way to Marge Samuels’ invention of the red wax packaging now synonymous with Maker’s Mark. Along the way Minnick makes stops in Europe and the United Kingdom to keep the reader compellingly flipping pages through amusing anecdotes and stories which otherwise may have been lost to dust and library basements. He is passionate in his subject and serves to provoke the reader into considering different approaches to the largely accepted traditional narratives long after the book has been put down. Hopefully this is the first of many books providing an alternative history, giving life to those voices largely ignored.
A / $17 / [BUY IT FROM AMAZON]
Whiskey Women
$17
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