Susan Cheever chronicles drinking in America

Abraham Lincoln

He abstained, likely due to hard-drinking relatives:

"I thought I knew all about Abraham Lincoln. I did not know that he was one of those rare human beings, and I mean rare, who didn't drink and didn't judge. His mother asked him on her death bed not to drink and he took that very seriously," Cheever says.

"But he fired George McClellan, who was his sober general in the Union Army, and hired Ulysses S. Grant, who had already been courtmartialed once for drinking. When the generals came and complained to Lincoln that Grant was drinking too much, Lincoln famously said bring me some barrels of what he's drinking so I can give it to all my generals. He wasn't a temperance guy."

Prohibition

Drinking, suffrage and taxes:

"I didn't know the way that Prohibition and women's temperance were wrapped around each other. Many of the women's suffrage crusaders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had started out as temperance crusaders," Cheever says.