Barkeep, a few more like this one, please

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Sismondo knows how to mix a heady cocktail with history and detail. (FRANK GUNN / CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES)

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America Walks into a Bar

A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops

By Christine Sismondo

Oxford University Press, 314 pages, $28

Sometime around the year 1620, America walked into a bar. It's still in there.

But as Toronto writer Christine Sismondo makes clear in this delightfully erudite exploration of one the most peculiar byways of American history, what has emerged from that bar in the centuries since has shaped the United States and changed the world.

Taverns have always been and remain today an important force in American history, politics and social mores.

The Mayflower, bringing the Pilgrims to America, was bound for the Hudson River in New York, but when it began to run short of beer and the captain had to dip into his own stash to keep the passengers happy and then had to start to worry about how he could satisfy his sailors on the way home, he dumped the Puritans 300 kilometres north of that, at Plymouth Rock.

One of the first things those Pilgrims did was to build a tavern, even before a church or a town hall. In fact, the tavern served all three functions until the settlement got better organized. The same scenario played out in most of the English settlements along the Atlantic seaboard -- the tavern became the centre of American life.

That was partly out of necessity and partly because the Puritans -- as hard as it may for us to imagine today -- did like their beer and they consumed it in considerable quantity, along with "cocktails" such as rattleskull, bombo, whistlebelly and flip and bounce:

In 1704, the New England Almanac published an ode to strong drink:

The days are short, the weather cold,

By tavern fires tales are told,

Some ask for dram when they come in,

Others with flip and bounce begin.

Sismondo, a lecture in humanities at York University and something of an expert in strong spirits -- she is also the author of another history called Mondo Cocktail -- is fond of quoting contemporary drinking songs and verses. Most cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

These ditties are just one of many pleasant surprises this book brings. We learn for example that the original Puritans were not just Salem-witch-burning, blue-nosed bigots. They were actually blotto most of time -- they drank from dawn till dusk -- and the Salem witch hunts (the "witches" were actually hanged, not burned) originated at least partly in the taverns of New England.

That is no surprise, perhaps. As Sismondo points out, America itself originated at least in part in the nation's taverns. The first tax revolt came out of a Philadelphia grog house, the Stamp Act riots came out of rage that was fuelled in New England inns and the American Revolution had its roots in the colonies' grog shops where men gathered to talk politics, oppose tyranny and work themselves into a patriotic fervour over copious -- a 21st-century wimp might say astonishing -- amounts of beer and booze.

Sismondo illustrates that what was true at Plymouth Rock in 1620 has remained true throughout American history. Tavern talk has had a remarkable influence on the shaping of the nation, in every century and almost every aspect of life.

America Walks into a Bar is history at its best. It is filled with fascinating detail -- it is hard to find a boring page -- about an important historical phenomenon. One puts it down with a sense of satisfaction and a strong urge for a large glass of flip and bounce and a question: Why can't all history books read like this?

Tom Oleson is a member of the Free Press editorial board.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 13, 2011 J7