Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer

New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2006. N1 - A first edition (stated with complete letterline) hardcover book SIGNED by author on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has wrinkling and some chipping on the edges, dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, light discoloration and shelf wear. With panoramic scope and sweep, Maureen Ogle creates a riveting portrait of the innovators and entrepreneurs behind our familiar brews and restores an essential piece of our American story. 9.5"x6.5", 422 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. In this first-ever history of American beer, Maureen Ogle tells its epic story, from the German immigrants who invented it to the upstart microbrewers who revived it. Beer might seem as American as baseball, but that has not always been true: Rum and whiskey were the drinks of choice in the 1830s, with only a few breweries making heavy, yeasty English ale. When a wave of Germans arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, they promptly set about re-creating the pleasures of the biergartens they had left behind. Just fifty years later, the American-style lager beer they invented was the nation's most popular beverage - and brewing was the nation's fifth-largest industry, ruled by fabulously wealthy titans Frederick Pabst and Adolphus Busch. But anti-German sentiments aroused by World War I enflamed an already aggressive anti-drink campaign (one activist even declared that "the worst of all our German enemies are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller"), Prohibition ended brewing's first golden age. In the wake of its repeal, brewers replaced flavor with innovations like marketing and lite beer, setting the stage for a generation of microbrewers whose ambitions reshaped the drink.. Signed by Author. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.