Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman's Saloon, 1870-1920

by Madelon Powers

Book Overview

In this lively and engaging history, Madelon Powers recreates the daily life of the barroom, exploring what it was like to be a "regular" in the old-time saloon of pre-prohibition industrial America. Through an examination of saloongoers across America, her investigation offers a fascinating look at rich lore of the barroom--its many games, stories, songs, free lunch customs, and especially its elaborate system of drinking rituals that have been passed...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226677699
• ISBN13: 9780226677699
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 331 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great historical book

My cousin has a master's degree in Museum Studies. I bought her this book and she loved it. She found it to be not only a good historical text, but very interesting to read.

Pour Yourself a Pint and Curl Up With This Book

As Powers states in her introduction, much of the historical literature dealing with drinking and saloon culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has been drawn from the reports of temperance advocates and middle-class progressives, who had a decidily negative view of the "poor man's club" and the activities that went on within them. In Faces Along the Bar, Madelon Powers turns this narrative around by allowing the workingmen to speak for themselves. Through the careful analysis of popular literature, songs, and traditional sources, the author has crafted a solid work of social and cultural history that places saloons and drinking in the proper context of the everyday lives of the urban working class. Her examinations of the origins of the "free lunch," "treating," and "clubbing" are insightful, and should challenge each and everyone of us who takes the many facets of our collective culture for granted. Highly recommeded.