Product Description

The untold story of the world's premier bourbon and the family that made it #1

American Still Life tells the intertwined true stories of America's favorite whiskey and the family dynasty that produces it to this very day. Jim Beam is the world's top-selling bourbon whiskey, with sales of over five million cases per year. Not a day has passed in the 207 years of Jim Beam's existence when a Beam family member has not been master distiller. Dedicated to quality, and dedicated to the family legacy, the Beams have shepherded their particularly American spirit to the top of their industry. And they've done it in an industry beset by challenges, from government regulation and prohibition, to changing consumer tastes, to fierce new global competition. By creating a brand of unparalleled quality and consistency, and by tying the success of their product with the good name of the family, the Beams have established a lasting legacy as perhaps one of the greatest family business dynasties in American history. Not just a simple history of "America's native spirit" (so named by an act of Congress in 1964) or a simple family history, American Still Life is a story of business success based on quality and attention to detail, constant innovation, revolutionary branding and advertising, and adaptation to the business environment.

F. Paul Pacult (Walkill, NY) is recognized the world over as his generation's most accomplished and respected authority on beverage alcohol. He has written for many magazines, including Playboy, Wine and Spirits, Connoisseur, Whisky, Drink, Men's Journal, Cheers, Country Inns, Travel and Leisure, Bon Appetit, Decanter, and Food and Wine. Among his many accomplishments, he has hosted and coproduced two syndicated talk-radio programs and served as the primary expert on whiskey, beer, and wine for the History Channel documentary America Drinks: History in a Glass.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418872 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .91" h x 6.34" w x 9.48" l, 1.18 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

From Publishers Weekly
How does a sour mash corn whiskey brand go from being a Kentucky family's "adjunct farming activity" to founding a corporation that ships over five million cases worldwide each year? Pacult (Kindred Spirits: The Spirit Journal Guide to the World's Distilled Spirits and Fortified Wines) extensively researched the story of the Beam family, which is just as much a 19th- and 20th-century American history. The young country's struggles with slavery, Prohibition and war, its sociopolitical maturation and its shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy all come into play. A prolific spirits writer, Pacult has an expert's grasp on the topic, which carries the book through its slow periods. Upstanding citizens to a man, the Beams don't always make for scintillating reading-no scoundrels, no scandals-and only Jim Beam's grandson Booker Noe, the refreshingly blunt, six-foot-four, 360-pound former master distiller, emerges as a character with any color. Trying to keep all the Beams straight might make readers feel like they've just downed a few shots of the bourbon itself. Most interesting is Pacult's examination of American popular culture and its effect on the bourbon business: how bourbon became declass‚ in the 1970s, the venerable spirit losing out to sexy newcomer vodka (and its inadvertent pitchman, James Bond), and how scotch whisky's rising popularity in the 1980s fueled the production of bourbon's answer to the single-malt, the small-batch bourbon. The book could use a few more colorful details, however, such as the bit about temperance activist Carry Nation and her ax attacks on taverns.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
How does a sour mash corn whiskey brand go from being a Kentucky family's "adjunct farming activity" to founding a corporation that ships over five million cases worldwide each year? Pacult (Kindred Spirits: The Spirit Journal Guide to the World's Distilled Spirits and Fortified Wines) extensively researched the story of the Beam family, which is just as much a 19th-and 20th-century American history. The young country's struggles with slavery, Prohibition and war, its sociopolitical maturation and its shift from the agricultural to an industrial economy all come into play. A prolific spirits writer, Pacult has an expert's grasp on the topic, which carries the book through its slow periods. Upstanding citizens to a man, the Beams don't always make for scintillating reading - no scoundrels, no scandals - and only Jim Beam's grandson Booker Noe, the refreshingly blunt, six-foot-four, 360-pound former master distiller, emerges as a character with any color. Trying to keep all the Beams straight might make readers feel like they've just downed a few shots of the bourbon itself. Most interesting is Pacult's examination of American popular culture and its effect on the bourbon business: how bourbon became d?class? in the 1970s, the venerable spirit losing out to sexy newcomer vodka (and its inadvertent pitchman, James Bond), and how scotch whiskey's rising popularity in the 1980s fueled the production of bourbon's answer to the single-malt, the small-batch bourbon. The book could use a few more colorful details, however, such as the bit about temperance activist Carry Nation and her ax attacks on taverns. (Aug.) (Publishers Weekly, June 16, 2003)

"...It's a fascinating glimpse of American political history..." (Drinks International, December 2003)

From the Inside Flap
Beverage alcohol has been a part of American culture since the first European settlers arrived with their family recipes for beers and spirits and founded their own distilleries and alehouses. Yet it wasn’t until Kentuckians began distilling whiskey from corn in the late eighteenth century that America would find its national drink–bourbon whiskey. Today, bourbon is as American as apple pie and Jim Beam is the biggest name in the business.

When first-generation American Jacob Beam relocated from Maryland to Kentucky and began distilling bourbon, he couldn’t have known that he was launching a family business of remarkable longevity. Over two centuries and seven generations, the company’s dedication to consistent quality has made Jim Beam the bestselling bourbon in the world and an American icon recognized around the globe–all the while keeping the business in the family’s hands.

In American Still Life, F. Paul Pacult–one of the world’s foremost writers on the subject of spirits–chronicles the success of the Beam family business and the drink that became a permanent fixture of our culture. Always willing to innovate, but never willing to sacrifice the integrity of their product, the Beam family steered their brand through challenges that would sink the average business–the Civil War, Prohibition, two world wars, and today’s fierce global competition. It’s a story inextricably interwoven with America’s rise to cultural and economic greatness and full of enlightening lessons for today’s business leaders.