Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits

Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits
By Stephanie Schorow
Union Park Press, October 2012, $18.50

For anyone who’s ever navigated the cobblestone streets of the historic city, or ducked into one of its dark, centuries-old pubs, Stephanie Schorow’s vividly conjured scenes of Boston’s drinking history will remind you how special the city is—if only for its politicians’ penchant for doing business in bars. Boston’s drinking history is populated by 18th-century revolutionaries, 1930’s gangsters and corrupt pols. Schorow describes the Colonial bars (where a “man might insist that all drink to the health of the king although some will mutter darkly about the onerous demands of the Crown”) as evocatively as she describes the South End’s J.J. Foley’s. From pints of Guinness to today’s rising nano- and microbreweries, Schorow makes it hard to put this one down. ■