Greg Smith's Beer in America: The Early Years -- 1587-1840: Beer's Role in the Settling of America and the Birth of a Nation, is a wonderfully smart and charming look on the history of beer and its connection to how America was founded and evolved into what it is today. Gregg Smith's account is an energetic recapping of early American history. It depicts beer as a foremost player, and vividly recreates the cultural and political background out of which it rose. One of the most significant but little-known characteristics of early American history is the part of beer in America's founding and formative years. This decisive version of beer's effect on people and events that fashioned the birth of a nation dumbfound all who read it. Smith presents many key facts and events that in some way or form are connected to beer. Starting with the pre-colonial era and finishing with America's development as an industrial power, Smith offers a renewed and speedily graceful adventure. Among his many astonishing disclosures are the motive for the Mayflower really landing at Plymouth; America's first prohibition; brewing in the colonies; and how George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were homebrewers. This...

Some of it does seem more fluff than substance, but the way he writes still appeals to a vast number of people while still being educational. Additionally he is able to show readers the importance of beer to people and how they used it to stay hydrated, get through the hard times of colonization, and even connect with each other. If anything, beer served as a way to socialize and relate. A good example of this was Smith's account of Ben Franklin.
Ben Franklin was a great man of many talents. He was also a man who offered respite in times of beer scarcity with the first printed recipe for a pumpkin ale. He provided relief from hop scarcity with directions on using spruce as a standby. Smmith even stated how William Franklin, Ben Franklin's son, although disappointed his father over the course of his life, made his father proud when he as Governor of New Jersey, enacted laws to control the flow of American beer to British soldiers.

Smith explains, beer, ale and cider were chief…