Our last lecture of 2012 is Andrew F. Smith speaking on “American Drinking History”

What is American Drink? Is it warmed-over traditional British beverages, such as tea, ale, hard cider, syllabubs, toddies? Or is it versions of ethnic beverages brought by successive waves of immigrants – lager and pilsner, sangria, tequila, bubble tea? Or is it the fiercely marketed creations of America’s beverage industry – Kentucky Bourbon, Kool-Aid, Snapple, Coors, Coca-Cola? Why do Americans drink the beverages that we do? These questions — and more — will be answered by culinary historian Andrew F. Smith, whose latest book is Drinking History: 15 Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages.

Andy Smith teaches food history, food controversies and professional food writing at the New School University in New York City. He is the author or editor of twenty-three books, including his latest, American Tuna: The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food; Drinking History: 15 Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages; and the 3-volume, second edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia on Food and Drink in America. He has written more than three hundred articles in academic journals, popular magazines and newspapers, and has served as historical consultant to several television series, including PBS’s “What We Eat and Why” and “The History Detectives,” the Food Network’s “Heavyweights,” the History Channel’s “American Eats,” and Discovery’s “How Stuff is Made.”

10:30am at the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Central Library downtown.

Free and open to the public.