Claims from a Book Introduction Eric Burns’ The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol is a 300-­‐page work of historical scholarship known for its “brilliant research,” its “elegantly interwoven anecdotes,” and its “engaging writing style.” It’s a highly informative and hugely entertaining book from the first sentence of Burns’ 5-­‐page introduction, entitled “The Spirits of the World”: Thousands of years ago, before Christ or Buddha or Muhammad, before democracy or industry or technology as we know the terms today, before the Roman Empire rose or the Colossus of Rhodes fell, before water wheels or paddle wheel boats, before decimals or compasses, before the first dice were rolled or the first sheet music was carved into cuneiform tablet, before sundials were invented or silver coins minted or stone bridges built across rivers—before any of this happened and before most of it was even a flash in the minds of madmen, there were people in Asia Minor drinking beer. Burns proceeds to make the same claim about more recent civilizations—“people in Sumer,” “people in Egypt,” “people in Babylonia,” and “people in the northern lands” of Scandinavia and Germany—pausing to give anecdotal details of the beer drinking culture in each of these regions. Then he does the same with the history of wine drinking, from India to China to Persia to Greece, Rome, and Etruria (part of ancient Italy). And finally, to round out his quick survey of where and how the drinking began, he turns to the invention of distilled liquors and the drinking habits of “New World colonists.” These opening pages of The Spirits of America are subject to same questions that we could ask of any academic introduction: What value does this introduction have as an introduction? Apart from its cheeky voice and its colorful style, how do these five pages of world history introduce the argument of the book? How and where does Burns introduce some sort of intellectual tension in his “social history” of drinking in America? What value judgment(s) does Burns make to create the conceptual focus that we call a thesis? Let’s find out. Read the last few paragraphs of this introduction, given here; underline any claim that strikes you as interpretive and not merely descriptive; and answer the questions that follow: There were people in Greece drinking wine, no less a figure than Socrates supposedly swearing that it “does of a truth ‘moisten the soul’ and lull our griefs to sleep.” The Greeks found that their griefs slept even more soundly when they blended their wine with spices and flavorings, perfumes and unguents. Then they diluted it further, the usual formula being three parts water to two parts grape. There were people in Rome drinking wine. They, too, watered the potion. But as time went on this seemed to them counterproductive: diluted wine, diluted pleasure. So the Romans began to add less water, making their wine stronger and stronger as the empire got weaker and weaker, the beverage perhaps not a cause of the empire’s eventual fall but almost surely an effect. There were people in Etruria drinking wine, probably taking it straight, and afterward, with as steady a hand as possible, recording their euphoria by drawing “scenes of bibulous merriment” on the walls of their caves. Then, inspired by their art, they created more bibulous merriment in real life. There was no drinking liquor in the ancient world; the principle of distillation would be discovered until much later—the first century A.D. according to one account, but more likely the seventh. The first distilled libation, brandy, was probably not blended until the eleventh century by a Spanish physician, a gentleman who seems not to have cared what his invention cured so much as what it momentarily alleviated. But half a millennium later, by the time the British had begun to colonize North America, setting up outposts in Virginia and Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, there would be a variety of distilled drinks available to men and women, not just brandy, and there would be improved means of brewing grains for beer and processing grapes for wine. The Americans would welcome them all. The Americans would drink them all, rivers of mind-­‐altering potables of their own that produced scenes of bibulous merriment of their own, not to mention inspiration and stimulation and comfort, as well as heartache and illness and dissolution and, finally, early in the twentieth century, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, perhaps the worst idea ever proposed by a legislative body anywhere in the world for the ostensible goal of a better society. In fact, alcoholic beverages would come to be more than just a staple of diet for the New World colonists; they would serve as an almost indispensable accompaniment to liberty: sparking the urge to separate from the motherland, igniting patriotism, stoking the passion for growth and prosperity and a government that was the perfect reflection of its citizens’ desires. It was, or so it seems in retrospect, as if freedom were an engine and spirits the fuel of the highest octane. Questions to Consider: 1. Burns very briefly sketches the history of wine drinking in Greece, Rome, and Etruria, as well as the invention of distilled liquor at a later date. Yet he puts his own spin on each of these subtopics. Does he make any inferences that might be regarded as interpretive? 2. What are his most evaluative claims in the remaining three paragraphs? 3. What do you take to be Burns’ statement of thesis in The Spirits of America—the main evaluative claim that he intends to prove with his history of drinking in America? 4. How does Burns establish the motive for his argument by raising a controversial issue and/or by foregrounding a momentous question? 5. How does Burns preview the contents of his book with the end of his introduction? 6. Why does he wait until the end of the introduction to do so? Why does he first devote the majority of his book’s introduction to a whirlwind tour of the world’s drinking history?