Description from Nation Books:
Rum is more than just a delicious drink - it helped to shape the modern world. Known then as "Nelson's blood," it was to the 17th Century what oil is to ours - the primary commodity fueling the engine of commerce in its time. Made from molasses, the story of rum is filled with humor and horror, courage and cowardice. Rum paid for wars and fired up the warriors who fought them. With temperance and prohibition, most Americans who were not historians developed a non-alcoholic amnesia about the importance of rum for the Reveolution and in the life of the founding fathers.
In Rum, Ian Williams revelas that:
The American Revolution was not about tea - it was about rum. Rum made New England habitable and economically bearable.
Rum fuelled the British Navy for two centuries of maritime dominance.
Rum and Revolution continue their relationship in the struggle between Havana Cuba and Bacardi.
Ian Williams's book - as biting, multifaceted, and warm-spirited as the drink itself - triumphantly restores rum's rightful place in history, taking us across space and time, from its origins in the plantations of Barbados through Puritan and Revolutionary New England, to Voodoo rites in modern Haiti and across the Florida straits where Fidel and the Bacardi family are still fighting over the rights to the ingredients for a Cuba Libre.
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