Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries.

A "look at the intertwining of alcohol and the underworld--represented by authors of crime both true and fictional and their glamorously disreputable characters, as well as by real life gangsters who built Prohibition-era empires on bootlegged booze. [The book] celebrates the potent potables they imbibed and the watering holes they frequented, including some bars that continue to provide a second home for crime writers"--Amazon.com.