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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Bourbon Country
Examining the ingredients—time, grain, government regulations—that have made bourbon an enduring national favorite.
Sobriety is Next to Godliness
Teetotalers in the early British temperance movement signed temperance pledges like those in The Livesey Collection on JSTOR.
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.
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.
The Politics of Drinking in Revolutionary Russia
To leaders, the ideal Soviet worker should be sober. Actual workers had other thoughts.