Moonshine or Diet for a New America

Moonshine!: Recipes * Tall Tales * Drinking Songs * Historical Stuff * Knee-Slappers *How to Make It * How to Drink It * Pleasin' the Law * Recoverin' the Next Day

Author: Matt Rowley

Now here’s a volume you can really drink to!  Something’s brewing in these pages, and it’s moonshine—a word that evokes fascination, curiosity, and a warm sense of nostalgia. Never before has there been such a richly illustrated, thorough, and entertaining celebration of the history of making fine distilled spirits. Take a trip through moonshining’s past: travel from its beginnings as a pioneer staple to the dark days of prohibition, from quickly produced urban rotgut to today’s carefully handcrafted artisanal libations. Get in on the fun with how-to instructions that take into account all legal regulations and requirements before covering ingredients, building a still, basic distilling techniques, and dozens of recipes, all adapted for the beginner. Whiskies, brandies, grappa, schnapps: they’re all here, along with dozens of page-turning quotes, song lyrics, and vintage photographs and illustrations.
“Making whisky or brandy is not the least bit difficult. Making something you’d want to drink…well, that may take some practice.”   —Matthew B. Rowley

Publishers Weekly

Food historian Rowley wants readers of this home-distillation guide to know something about alcohol and the law: "Without inspection and proper approvals, you are not permitted to make any amount for personal use. Not one drop." That said, Rowley provides clear and well-illustrated instructions for building a still, preparing a mash and distilling alcohol right in your own backyard. It's a complicated process, requiring a fire extinguisher, the skills of a good metalsmith and plenty of patience. For those without the time or skill, however, Rowley includes plenty of appealing recipes for cordials and cocktails that don't require homemade spirits. Fish House Punch, rumored to have left George Washington with a "crippling hangover," is a powerful mix of bourbon, peach brandy, Benedictine and dark rum. Simpler, and similarly all-American, is Cherry Bounce, made with bourbon, honey and a gallon of sweet and sour cherries. But Rowley's mother provides perhaps the best recipe, an easy maceration of fruit and sugar that tastes great over ice cream or on its own. Rounded out with trivia, tall tales, a brief history of bootlegging, a list of home brewing resources and a few warnings for drinkers ("Even for accomplished boozers, moonshine can make off with your dignity before you understand what's happening"), this may be the last book one will ever need on the art of in-house hooch. (May)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

New interesting book: Local Breads or Crepes

Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness, and the Future of Life on Earth

Author: John B Robbins

Since the publication in 1987 of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19 kpercent. Diet for a New America is considered by many to be one of the most important contributors to this dramatic shift in eating habits.

In the first section, John Robbins takes an extraordinary look at America's dependence on animals for food and the often inhumane conditions under which these animals are raised. It becomes clear that the price paid for such eating habits can be measured in the suffering of animals.

The second section challenges the belief that consuming meat is necessary for optimum health by pointing out the vastly increased rate of disease caused by pesticides, hormones, additives, and other chemicals that are now a routine part of food production. The author shows how the production, preparation, and consumption of food can once again be a healthy process by omitting meat entirely from the food chain.

In the third section, Robbins looks at the global implications of a meat-based diet and concludes that the enormous amount of resources consumed in the production of meat is a major factor in ecological crises.

Publishers Weekly

This well-documented expose of America's ``factory farms'' should prompt even die-hard meat-and-potatoes lovers to reevaluate their diets. Asserting that ``we are ingesting nightmares for breakfast, lunch and dinner,'' Robbins, who is medical director of the California Institute for Health and Healing, details how livestock is raised under increasingly industrialized conditions by ``agribusiness oligopolies.'' Grazing and foraging have given way to debeaking, tail-docking, dehorning and castration, and treatment with pesticides, hormones, growth and appetite stimulants, tranquilizers and antibioticswhich, in turn, are assimilated by humans. The author correlates our ``protein obsessed'' society with a higher incidence of arteriosclerosis, osteoporosis, cancer and other degenerative diseases, as well as freakish occurrences like premature puberty from estrogen contamination. As Robbins debunks nutritional myths perpetuated by the powerful meat and dairy industries (indicting as well his family's Baskin-Robbins ice-cream empire), this is sure to prove controversial. Photos not seen by PW. (September 10)

What People Are Saying

Andrew Weil
Diet for a New America is a powerful indictment of our dietary practices that should be read by everyone interested in healthy living. It is well-researched, well-documented, and eye-opening. I recommend this book to patients, friends, and relatives.