Every Home a Distillery

"A well-composed, clearly written, highly informative study that significantly contributes to our understanding of how alcohol was brewed, distributed, and consumed in the colonial Chesapeake area."

"This exceptionally well-researched book provides important new information about alcohol practices in colonial America."

"Meacham’s style is eminently readable, informative, and entertaining. Her detailed ‘Essay on sources’ is particularly useful. This work would appeal to students of early American studies, American history, and women’s history."

"Meacham has studied and interrelated a broad variety of primary sources for this book: diaries, letters, account books, probate inventories and wills, cookbooks, court and local government records. The result is an eminently insightful, readable, and usefully annotated history."

"This book does a real service in putting free women's work (enslaved women receive far briefer attention) at the center of colonial experience... With its focus on the methods and organization of alcohol production, Every Home a Distillery will appeal to anyone interested in early business history."

"Meacham offers an engaging, thoughtful analysis of the gendered nature of alcohol production, using original sources and challenging historians to think in more complex ways about colonial men, women and gendered labor."

"[Meacham] convincingly argues that alcohol consumption was central to the lives of men and women in the colonial period... This book provides an important look at the gendered production of alcohol. It is useful to anyone interested in colonial history, women's history, or the history of alcohol."

"What is instructive about Meacham's book is that it examines the whole landscape of drink production and consumption in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake and explores the linkages between domestic and commercial output, the tavern trade and the nature and impact of alcohol drinking... An interesting, well-written book that makes an important contribution to the literature."

"Anyone interested in daily life in the colonial Chesapeake would certainly benefit from reading this work."

"It is a great pleasure when one comes across a brilliant interpretation of primary sources... [Meacham] tells a most fascinating and unique story... Every Home a Distillery offers a penetrating look at how people produced and acquired alcohol in the Chesapeake, the microcosm that greatly influenced the creation of the United States."

"Meacham's study is a welcome addition... By focusing her narrative on the production side of the alcohol market, Meacham establishes the basis for the ultimate microbrewery—the home, but, in her case, the plantation."

"A well-researched, thoughtful, and nicely written study of the gendered production of alcoholic beverages in the Chesapeake colonies. Meacham makes an original and highly readable contribution to the history of early America."