Cocked and Boozy: Alcohol and the American Revolution
Episode notes
How important was alcohol to the American Revolution?
In this episode of the Friends of Mount Vernon Book Club, we discuss Brooke Barbier’s Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution and the role drinking played in the politics, economics, social relationships, and everyday life of Revolutionary America.
The conversation explores taverns and drinking culture, alcohol as both a social equalizer and a marker of class, and what the drinking habits of figures such as George Washington and John Hancock can tell us about the people behind the familiar stories of the founding era.
We also discuss Barbier’s use of food, drink, humor, and social history to make eighteenth-century Americans feel less distant—and what alcohol reveals about power, sociability, politics, and the society that produced the American Revolution.
Book discussed: Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution by Brooke Barbier.