Drinking in America: Our Secret History Quotes.

1. "The Pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on a cold November day in 1620 because they were running out of beer."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

2. "The Pilgrims believed beer was an unalloyed good, a 'good creature of God.' People who did not drink were suspect and 'crank-brained."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

3. "There wasn’t much good to say about the voyage. Five weeks in, with no land in sight, the scanty provisions began to run out. This was a concern for passengers, and also for sailors who were traditionally promised a gallon of beer a day as part of their sailing wages. They could do without food; they could not do without drink."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

4. "By the 1820s American drinking was out of control. Children drank before school, during school at recess, and after school. Farmers had jugs stashed at the end of every row in their fields. Factories featured frequent drinking breaks. Meals were washed down with applejack. Workers invariably headed for the bar on payday long before they thought of going home to spend the money on their families’ needs. The whole country was more or less living under the influence, farming under the influence, and even studying under the influence. In 1820, the average amount an individual drank in one day was more than three times the average today.119"
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

5. "On the voyage from England, beer was their everything. Beer was their fruit and their vegetables in a diet that otherwise consisted of bread, cheese, and meat. Beer was their yogurt with its healing enzymes, and beer was their medicinal spirit. Beer was their water, and beer was their, well, beer."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

6. "Desperate for beer, they ignored the abundant freshwater. Even the Bible advised against drinking water in Saint Paul’s epistle to Timothy: Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and for thine own infirmities.27"
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

7. "Twenty-first-century American writers do not drink much."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

8. "Drinking, as Eric Burns writes, was our first national pastime—long before baseball was invented."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

9. "Seven thousand arrests for alcohol possession in New York City between 1921 and 1923 (when enforcement was more or less openly abandoned) resulted in only seventeen convictions."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History

10. "Liquor was inexpensive, but the average colonist spent a quarter of his household income on alcohol."
- Susan Cheever, Drinking in America: Our Secret History