This 1997 book is a mixture of cultural and labour history which traces the role of barmaids and Australian drinking culture.

Now a USA Today Bestseller! A sparkingly witty, poignant debut novel that is a Bright Lights, Big City for a post-Reagan, pre-Y2K Philadelphia—for readers of Normal People, Sweetbitter, Modern Lovers, and Less. It’s September 1987. Charlie Green is an eighteen-year-old romantic and aspiring alcoholic, whose great wish is to fall in love with a light-eyed girl on his first day of college and never look back. Charlie believes in the magic of bars and girls. He believes he can use these talismans to finally feel at home, an assurance his dim and privileged childhood did not provide. At the Sansom Street Oyster House, he meets Paula Henderson, a beautiful and deceptively soulful waitress who is the most overqualified bar maid in all the city—and perhaps the most alluring. But there are obstacles in the Philly night between Charlie and his full heart. Drunks, louts, boyfriends—heroes too. And in Paula’s eyes, Charlie becomes one. When she takes him home to New Hope, PA, to meet her very Catholic mother, the young couple must contend with the consequences of their pure love. In this darkly comedic coming-of-age novel, Charlie Green needs to grow up fast. At stake is his soul.

A comprehensive encyclopedia on all aspects of the production, consumption, and social impact of alcohol. Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia spans the history of alcohol production and consumption from the development of distilled spirits and modern manufacturing and distribution methods to the present. Authoritative and unbiased, it brings together the work of hundreds of experts from a variety of disciplines with an emphasis on the extraordinary wealth of scholarship developed in the past several decades. Its nearly 500 alphabetically organized entries range beyond the principal alcoholic beverages and major producers and retailers to explore attitudes toward alcohol in various countries and religions, traditional drinking occasions and rituals, and images of drinking and temperance in art, painting, literature, and drama. Other entries describe international treaties and organizations related to alcohol production and distribution, global consumption patterns, and research and treatment institutions, as well as temperance, prohibition, and antiprohibitionist efforts worldwide.

Alcohol consumption goes to the very roots of nearly all human societies. Different countries and regions have become associated with different sorts of alcohol, for instance, the “beer culture” of Germany, the “wine culture” of France, Japan and saki, Russia and vodka, the Caribbean and rum, or the “moonshine culture” of Appalachia. Wine is used in religious rituals, and toasts are used to seal business deals or to celebrate marriages and state dinners. However, our relation with alcohol is one of love/hate. We also regulate it and tax it, we pass laws about when and where it’s appropriate, we crack down severely on drunk driving, and the United States and other countries tried the failed “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition. While there are many encyclopedias on alcohol, nearly all approach it as a substance of abuse, taking a clinical, medical perspective (alcohol, alcoholism, and treatment). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol examines the history of alcohol worldwide and goes beyond the historical lens to examine alcohol as a cultural and social phenomenon, as well—both for good and for ill—from the earliest days of humankind.

Back when SOS or Adam and Eve on a raft were things to order if you were hungry but a little short on time and money, nearly one-fourth of all waitresses belonged to unions. By the time their movement peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the women had developed a distinctive form of working-class feminism, simultaneously pushing for equal rights and pay and affirming their need for special protections. Dorothy Sue Cobble shows how sexual and racial segregation persisted in wait work, but she rejects the idea that this was caused by employers' actions or the exclusionary policies of male trade unionists. Dishing It Out contends that the success of waitress unionism was due to several factors: waitresses, for the most part, had nontraditional family backgrounds, and most were primary wage-earners. Their close-knit occupational community and sex-separate union encouraged female assertiveness and a decidedly unromantic view of men and marriage. Cobble skillfully combines oral interviews and extensive archival records to show how waitresses adopted the basic tenets of male-dominated craft unions but rejected other aspects of male union culture. The result is a book that will expand our understanding of feminism and unionism by including the gender conscious perspectives of working women.