There is no other company, industry, or premises more closelyaligned—indeed almost synonymous—with its hometown than Guinness’s St.James’s Gate Brewery and the city of Dublin. From the company’s modestbeginnings in 1759 to its heyday in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries and its continued strength into the twenty-firstcentury, Guinness has had an enormous influence over the city’seconomic, social, and cultural life.In this warm andfascinating piece of history, Tony Corcoran examines the magnitude ofthe brewery’s operation, and the working lives of the thousands ofDubliners who have depended on Guinness for their livelihood, eitherdirectly or indirectly. The company’s unusually progressive treatmentof its workers—health care, training, and housing—is revealed indetail, as is the Guinness family’s philanthropy and compassiontowards the less well-off residents of the city. Tracing Guinness’sprogressive attitudes to their roots, Corcoran also explores theimportant roles of the strong-willed women in each generation of theGuinness dynasty. A labor of love, full of anecdotes, humor, andhistorical insights into one of Dublin’s most important and best-lovedinstitutions.“Whenever I bleed, I am always surprised to see that my blood isnot black. Certainly, when you consider that I was born into twoGuinness families, had two Guinness grandfathers and five Guinnessuncles, and was on the premises of Guinness before I could walk, I amas much a product of Guinness as the black stuff itself.”—TonyCorcoran