America Walks Into a Bar - A Spiritual History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops (Christine Sismondo, 2011)

Focusing on bars and liquor laws yields a lot of very interesting U.S. history - I found this book quite helpful; also this one.

But I can't figure out what the author is trying to do with this particular book (or what the editor was thinking, or not thinking).  This book simply rambles across most of the span of U.S. history with some occasional tethering to events in taverns, or saloons, or bars, or whatever they were called at any particular point.

This boring author even goes through a check-the-box exercise with blurbs on bar access by the main identity politics groups.

Not nearly enough discussion of the bars themselves.  Some interesting discussion about how a tavern often was the first gathering spot in new settlements (sometimes remaining that way for years - courts, politics, meetings etc. centered there).

One of the more useless books I've read recently, just blew through it quickly.

Did like the Jack London quotes - he had a way of taking the reader inside the 19th century bar culture.