Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink!: 65 Cocktails to Protest America's Most Outlandish Alcohol Laws

Description

Across this nation, in breweries, liquor stores, bars, and even our own homes, we're being stripped of our most basic boozy rights. Thanks to Prohibition and its 100-year hangover, some of the most outdated, bizarre, and laughably loony laws still on the books today center around alcohol and how we drink it. In New Mexico, $1 margaritas are illegal. In Utah, cocktails must be mixed behind a barrier called the "Zion curtain." And forget about happy hour in Massachusetts--the state banned it in 1984. But we don't have to stand down and dry up--it's time to take to liquid protest. Created by the nation's leading alcohol policy expert, Give Me Liberty and Give Me a Drink! combines the thirst-inducing pleasure of trivia with 65 recipes for classic and innovative cocktails. So arm yourself with a mezcal-based One Pint, Two Pint, inspired by Vermont's ban on beer pitchers, or The Boiling Point, a beer cocktail that is highly illegal in Virginia, and get ready to drink your way to a revolution on the rocks."

C. Jarrett Dieterle is a leading alcohol policy expert, the editor in chief of DrinksReform.org, a contributing drinks writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the director of commercial freedom and a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC. A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Richmond, he has written about spirits, booze history, and questionable regulations for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Post, Forbes, Liquor.com, VinePair, SevenFifty Daily, and NPR's James Beard Award-winning blog, The Salt. He is a native of Michigan and lives with his wife and Australian shepherd mix near Richmond, Virginia, where he never, ever has a boilermaker (thanks, Virginia government).

"A fun look at some of the weirder booze-related laws, from Colonial times to Prohibition-era relics. A rich source of trivia and storytelling lore." --Liquor.com "You'll both laugh and wince. . . . It's a fun collection of conversation starters and cocktail recipes." --Virginia Living "Jarrett Dieterle is an engaging guide through the crazy world of American liquor laws. But his book is more than just a romp: It is an impassioned case against a senseless system propped up by entrenched and anticonsumer scolds. Come for the cocktail recipes, stay for the call to arms." --Clay Risen, author of American Whiskey, Bourbon Rye "Stupid booze laws, snappy cocktail recipes, and profiles in booze courage make for a potent, thought-provoking mixture of fun and 'what the hell?' awareness in this high-proof volume." --Lew Bryson, author of Whiskey Master Class