The New Statesman, for which I wrote over 20 years ago, is known in Britain as the Staggers.. appropriate for a rum review1
Ian

Books

After the sugar rush

Yo Zushi

Published 08 May 2008

Rum: a Social and Sociable History
Ian Williams Nation Books, 340pp, £9.99

Rum is the “demon” beverage favoured by pirates, slavers, buccaneers and, as the French historian Alain Huetz de Lemp once declared, “all the vagabonds who scoured the New World”. The Nation correspondent Ian Williams’s micro-historical journey looks beyond this reputation to uncover a heady past at the very heart of world trade.

From its Caribbean-Creole origins to its significance in Castro’s Cuba, Williams traces the drink’s biography with a connoisseur’s nose for a striking anecdote. The Kennedy dynasty made its fortunes “supplying Yankee thirsts during Prohibition”, while America’s Pilgrim Fathers were “a bunch of weird cultists” who thought nothing of waylaying a Quaker ship for its cargo’s value “in rum and sugar”.

But its darkest secret is its importance to the transatlantic slave trade. Rum was a “double enslaver”: it both depended “on the toil of slaves to make” and was “the main trade item to buy slaves in West Africa”. The Sugar Rush, as malicious and as maddening as the Gold Rush, pioneered the Middle Passage to the Americas. There, rum’s high market value helped to justify the use of an “industrial-scale” slave force. Williams’s headlong dive into “rumbalia” is an overproof treat.

The British Edition: out April 2008!

Rum: A Social and Sociable History

Paperback Original

Ian Williams

Imprint: Nation Books

Extent: 340 pages

Format: Paperback, 210 x 140mm

ISBN 13: 978-15602-5891-9

Price: £9.99

Publication: 1^st April 2008

Rum: A Social and Sociable History

Paperback Original

Ian Williams

340 pages

Format: Paperback, 210 x 140mm

ISBN 13: 978-15602-5891-9

Price: £9.99

Publication: 1^st April 2008

Perseus Running Press, 69–70 Temple Chambers, 3–7 Temple Ave, London, EC4Y 0HP

w Tel: 020 7353 7771 w Fax: 020 7353 7786

Distribution: Grantham Book Services

Isaac Newton Way, Alma Park Industrial Estate, Grantham, Lincs, NG31 8EN w Tel +44 (0)1476 541080

w UK Fax: +44 (0)1476 541061 w Email: orders@gbs.tbs-ltd.co.uk

w Export Fax: + 44 (0)1476 541068 w Export Email: export@gbs.tbs-ltd.co.uk

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Events

2008

• November, St Lucia Food & Rum Festival
• 25/26 October UK Rum Fest London
• 25 June, Washington DC, Caribbean Tourism Summit Rum Show!
• 22/23 June, New York Javits Center 2008 New York Bar Show
• May 27 National Arts Club, New York, Fleetweek Rum Tasting
• May 15/19, Puerto Rico Caribbean Media Echange on Sustainable Tourism
• April 2008, details TBA launch of the British Edition of Rum across the UK
• 26-30March, 2008 Ybor City, Florida, Polished Palate International Rum Festival
• 27 March, 2008 Clearwater, Florida, International Rum Tasting Dinner

• January 11 Ian Williams talks to the Alaska World Affairs Council in Anchorage, on the UN, with a sideline on Rum, of course! carried by KSKA

AWAC Presents: Ian Williams
By Kristin Spack
… Williams explains why the UN is “the worst possible system in the world… except for all of the alternatives.” Ian Williams: Author, Writer, Speaker; Ian Williams: More columns than Parthenon; Ian Williams Blog: Deadline Pundit …

KSKA Public Radio - http://kska.org/

January 9, Ian Williams speaks to Juneau World Affairs Council

2007

December 3, New York, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall,

Ian Williams’s MC’s UNESCO-sponsored concert

December 8 New York, UN Headquarters

Announces winners of UNCA 2007 Journalism Awards
2008

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