Books

The Great American Ale Trail: The Craft Beer Lover’s Guide to the Best Watering Holes in the Nation
By Christian De Benedetti
Running Press, September 2011, $20

“A wonderful thing happens when you travel with beer in mind: the world opens up in a more friendly way,” writes Christian De Benedetti, who took to the backroads of America to report on the bars and brewpubs holding down the craft beer front on the retail end. Each bar gets the full treatment: “Scene & Story,” “Philosophy” and “Key Beer” segments capture the personality of each pub, from heavy-hitters like San Fran’s Toronado to the locally focused Angry Hanks brewpub in Montana. And the user-friendly content is more navigable than the coffee-stained Rand McNally on the floor of your car—which is to say, this is the quintessential road trip book.

Boston’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking & Diving in Beantown
By Luke O’Neil
Gamble Guides, May 2011, $12.95

The crooked dart boards. The cheap brown liquors. The jukebox that never seems to get to your song. Twenty years ago, virtually every block in Boston had its own townie-run, cash-only watering hole. But nowadays, between skyrocketing rent and hipster gentrification, dive bars are dying out—and with them, a stratum of Boston’s blue-collar culture. So, what’s left? Luke O’Neil profiles 90 divey outposts through the eyes of the people who love them. Between interviews with owners and regulars, and descriptions as raw as the actual bars (“There’s no door on the shitter,” he writes, “which is pretty much universal dive speak for ‘We’re sick of dudes blasting rails in here’”), O’Neil anatomizes the dive bar itself, and in turn, the old-school locals who still drink inside them. ■