Historian Henry Crowgey argues that distilling and Kentucky’s pioneer settlement went hand in hand, tracing bourbon’s roots to figures like Isaac Shelby, the state’s first governor and one of its earliest distillers.
The book follows bourbon from a cottage industry through steam-powered commercial operations before the Civil War, along the way touching on camp-meeting whiskey, bourbon as a medium of exchange, and the industry’s coming of age.
Published 2008
190 pages
$15.58