Review by Booklist Review
In this enlightening and entertaining survey of women and alcohol, feminist and very funny author O'Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon, 2019) takes readers on a dipsomaniacal journey through numerous cultures, documenting how women have always taken the lead in the fermenting, brewing, distilling, and serving of strong spirits. O'Meara begins 25,000 years ago with a cave-carving of a mead-drinking goddess and ends with a profile of an award-winning twenty-first-century transgender bartender who specializes in LGBTQ+ cocktails. Named after famous imbibers (Cleopatra, Saint Hildegard, the Widow Clicquot), chapters spend almost as much time exploring women's rights and roles as they do on the chemistry, manufacture, marketing, and consumption of alcoholic drinks. O'Meara deftly blends in equal measures of social history, gossip, and solid research, and adds enjoyable footnotes. The final take-away is that despite male interference, ranging from sanctimonious condemnation of women who drink in public to harsh punishments (including death) for women who take even one sip, women have discovered, invented, advanced, championed, and celebrated alcohol. Ladies? This calls for a drink.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Who decided that drinking was a gendered act?" muses screenwriter O'Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon) in this thorough, and thoroughly entertaining, history. Using detailed portraits of 15 women--"all of ... illuminate different facets of what it was like to drink through the ages for a woman who wanted to have a drink"--she dismantles false tropes around femininity with panache. Her subjects range from the 12th-century Benedictine mother superior who realized hops could keep beer fresh, to Catherine the Great, who convinced soldiers to overthrow her husband by promising them vodka. Throughout, O'Meara uses what might seem lighthearted trivia to build spot-on social critique: "The double standard that drinking women face is deeply rooted in male anxieties about... women acting like people, not property." Elegantly woven into each cheeky chapter is rigorous historical context; a profile of the 19th-century widow who popularized Champagne, for instance, also educates readers on cocktail culture in the United States before dovetailing with the story of Japanese sake revolutionary Tatsu'uma Kiyo. O'Meara glides easily from the 17th-century pulquerias of Mexico to the feminine "fern bars" of the 1970s, making sure to not to forget the queen of girly drinks: the Cosmopolitan. Provoking both thought and laughter, this serves as bracing refreshment from a master textual mixologist. Agent: Brady McReynolds, JABberwocky Literary Agency. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Starting out with the early days of civilization and moving into the present day, O'Meara (host of the podcast Reading Glasses and author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon) traces a global history of women and alcohol. Readers might think of the "girly drinks" of the title as cocktails with little paper umbrellas, but O'Meara's is an amusing, feminist history of alcohol that offers insight into distillers, brewers, activists, and leaders throughout history. The book's 15 well-researched historical accounts include profiles of Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, and Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, the first Black woman in South Africa to open a microbrewery. The author also discusses the Japanese "belief that a female deity…created the sake making process," and a history of champagne features Widow Clicquot and Madame de Pompadour (King Louis V's mistress) who is credited as an influential champagne promoter. O'Meara has interesting insight about One Hundred and One Beverages (1904) by May E. Southworth, which is believed to be the first cocktail book written by a woman. Fun facts abound in O'Meara's volume, but she also considers more serious matters, like the impact of the temperance movement and American Prohibition. VERDICT A unique, entertaining resource to bolster culinary and women's studies collections.--Barbara Kundanis, Longmont P.L., CO
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