Thursday May 8, 2025
Soda House Auditorium
Registration  will be via Eventbrite

On May 8 Lisa Jacobson will speak about her new book, Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey after Prohibition. Following prohibition’s end in 1933 alcoholic beverage producers struggled for decades to restore alcohol’s respectability and mass market success. It took a battalion of public relations experts and tastemakers to establish wine, beer, and whiskey as legitimate emblems of the American good life. Using sources such as the Joseph Seagrams’ collection held by Hagley, Jacobson charts the industry’s public relations juggernaut that worked relentlessly during and after World War II to restore alcohol’s legitimacy and to encourage a new generation to (responsibly) imbibe. In the end it was the yearnings of ordinary consumers and military personnel that shaped alcohol’s cultural reinvention. Her book will be available for purchase and to be signed by the author.

Lisa Jacobson is associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.