Love on the rocks : men, women, and alcohol in post-World War II America

In this fascinating history of alcohol in postwar American culture, Lori Rotskoff draws on short stories, advertisements, medical writings, and Hollywood films to investigate how gender norms and ideologies of marriage intersected with scientific and popular ideas about drinking and alcoholism. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, recreational drinking became increasingly accepted among white, suburban, middle-class men and women. But excessive or habitual drinking plagued many families. How did people view the "problem drinkers" in their midst? How did husbands and wives learn to cope within an "alcoholic marriage?" And how was drinking linked to broader social concerns during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War era? By the 1950s, Rotskoff explains, mental health experts, movie producers, and members of self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon helped bring about a shift in the public perception of alcoholism from "sin" to "sickness." Yet alcoholism was also viewed as a family problem that expressed gender-role failure for both women and men. On the silver screen (in movies such as The Lost Weekend and The Best Years of Our Lives) and on the printed page (in stories by writers such as John Cheever), in hospitals and at Twelve Step meetings, chronic drunkenness became one of the most pressing public health issues of the day. Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Cultures Of Drink In Prohibition And Post-repeal America -- Dissolute Manhood And The Rituals Of Intemperance ; Righteous Womanhood And The Politics Of Temperance ; Depression, War, And The Rise Of Social Drinking ; Drink, Gender, And Sociability In The 1930s And 1940s -- Engendering The Alcoholic -- From Intemperance To Alcoholism ; Diagnosing The Alcoholic Man ; Problem Drinkers And Returning Veterans In Postwar Popular Culture -- Alcoholics Anonymous And The Culture Of Sobriety -- Social Foundations Of Mutual Help In The 1930s And 1940s ; Early Membership Of Alcoholics Anonymous ; Gendered Rituals Of Fellowship ; Gendered Narratives Of Illness And Recovery -- Dilemma Of The Alcoholic Marriage -- Diagnosing The Alcoholic's Wife ; Wives Of Aa And Al-anon In The 1940s And 1950s ; Rehabilitating The Alcoholic Marriage -- Drink And Domesticity In Postwar America -- Alcoholic Culture Of The Postwar Suburbs ; Alcohol And Family Trouble In Postwar Fiction And Popular Culture ; Drinking, Consumerism, And The Cultural Significance Of Alcoholism. By Lori Rotskoff. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Alcohol has always had a special role in the United States. From 1620, when the Puritans were forced to land on Plymouth Rock because the Mayflower had almost run out of beer, until 1933, when Prohibition was repealed in an unprecedented move, the use of alcohol has been the baton by which the self-righteous have conducted antipleasure movements in America. In her well-researched, well-written book, Lori Rotskoff shows how the drinking of alcohol assumed another role: "workers forged a sense of class identity during their leisure hours ... passed in the familiar surroundings of the neighborh A cultural history of drinking and alcoholism from Prohibition to the mid-1960s, focusing on how gender norms and ideologies of marriage shaped Americans' views and experiences of drinking In 1913 at age thirty-six, the novelist Jack London published his autobiographical novel John Barleycorn.