Two beer glasses

Drinking with Intellectual Humility

What happens when you mix alcohol with intellectual humility? A philosopher asks a writer and former bartender to share her thoughts.
Soviet political leader Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953) at work in his office, with a portrait of Karl Marx hanging on the wall over his head, April 1932.

Getting Pickled With Joseph Stalin

The Soviet dictator was notorious for hosting drinking parties where vodka loosened the inhibitions of associates and got them to reveal their secrets.
A woman proffers a jug of ale to a man in the street from her 'house of shame', in an allegorical 19th century woodcut.

A Pint for the Alewives

Until the Plague decimated Europe and reconfigured society, brewing beer and selling it was chiefly the domain of the fairer sex.
Thomas Jefferson

Making Malt Liquor at Monticello

Thomas Jefferson thought whiskey was harmful to the country. Together with enslaved brewer Peter Hemings, he experimented with making less potent drinks.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 1779

Abstinence By Juramentos

Long before Dry January became a thing, Mexicans were using a similar program of temporary abstinence based on a pledge to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Barrels of whiskey are opened and poured into a blending vat below, circa 1940.

Bourbon Country

Examining the ingredients—time, grain, government regulations—that have made bourbon an enduring national favorite.
Speaking Pictures : Pledge Promotes

Sobriety is Next to Godliness

Teetotalers in the early British temperance movement signed temperance pledges like those in The Livesey Collection on JSTOR.
The Dissolute Household by Jan Steen, ca. 1663-64

Drunk as a Lord? OK, if You’re a Lord

Where does class-based hypocrisy over substance use come from? Look to the seventeenth century.
Karneval in Rom by Johannes Lingelbach

Is It Really Carnival if You’re Not Drunk?

Carnival is known for overturning the rules of society for a short time. But strangely, many scholars don't discuss what a big role alcohol plays in it.
A Russian poster criticizing alcohol abuse.

The Politics of Drinking in Revolutionary Russia

To leaders, the ideal Soviet worker should be sober. Actual workers had other thoughts.