Hot tip on another new book, this one a history of the early twentieth-century Prohibition movement: Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

In my opinion, up to now, no one has written a particularly good, accessible history of Prohibition. As I noted in Ambitious Brew, most accounts  focus on speakeasies and gunslingers, and so completely miss the extraordinary political/lobbying group that built the 18th Amendment over a period of 25 years.

But I gather that Okrent has gotten it right. The book just came out, so presumably it's available anywhere fine-and-not-so-fine books are sold. .

I've not yet read the book (honest: I'm up to my ears in poultry trade journals...), but it sounds like a winner. So if you're looking for a good nonfiction read with which to kick off your summer, I doubt you can do better than this. (For a substantive review, see this from last Sunday's New York Times.)

As for me, I plan to read it --- ya know, just as soon as I bring my brain up out of the chicken coop. Which should be soon (I'm writing the relevant chapter and when I finish it, I plan to reward myself by resuming my regular break-neck pace of blogging.)

Oh, boy, can't wait to read this one! Sounds like a winner. Won't be out until October (and hey, who knows? Maybe by then I'll have a chance to read something other than poultry industry trade journals).

Got so excited at my progress on the new book that I thought maybe I'd get back to normal with the blog.

But --- maybe not. Because I've not started writing the next chapter yet, and my mental benchmark was "Starting writing the next chapter and then you're allowed back at the blog."

But here's something unrelated to that: the kitchen is really, truly finally finished. We moved back into it last Friday. Want to see the final product? Photos at Shutterfly. The first "album"--- "Before and After" ---  is the quick-and-easy tour of before and after. (The rest of the albums there are more detailed and I posted those so the family could follow along.)

So. Back to work. Be back soon.