Description
Book SynopsisBorn in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1850, Jack Daniel became a legendary moonshiner at age 15 before launching a legitimate distillery ten years later. By the time he died in 1911, he was an American legend-and his Old No. 7 Tennessee sipping whiskey was an international sensation, the winner of gold medals at the St.
Trade ReviewThe author traces the Daniel family lineage from Scotland and Ireland to rural Tennessee, and Jasper “Jack” Newton Daniel’s rise from hardscrabble youth to a dandy gent with a love of horses, fine clothes and women, a colleague of J.P. Morgan’s and one of the most famous spirits producers in the world. Orphaned at 15, Jack discovered a whiskey still on the property of his longtime neighbor and new guardian, Dan Call, and his interest in distilling booze was born. Krass (
Carnegie) details the early business partnership between Call and Daniel and their eventual split, as Call forces himself to choose between preaching and making whiskey. “One Call [descendant] wished he’d given up preaching instead because the Jack Daniel Distillery was eventually worth tens of millions of dollars,” Krass writes. While Krass’s research is ample, the book often gets bogged down in historical minutiae, and at times the reader wishes for a more charismatic star of the show than the somewhat dour Daniel. But witnessing the maturation of his namesake company—not to mention the maturation of the U.S. as it confronts slavery, the Civil War and the temperance movement—is engrossing. Fans of the whiskey will be happy to hear the alleged real story behind the Old No. 7 that adorns each bottle, and anyone can appreciate the classic American characters sprinkled throughout the text, including the richly monikered Eph Grizzard, Beauregard Beam and Lemuel Motlow.
Agent, Ed Knappman. (May) (
Publishers Weekly, April 12
th, 2004)
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 The Cursed Child 7
2 Everything Gone but the Dirt 25
3 Legend of the Boy Distiller 42
4 The Nomad 64
5 Reunion and Challenge 75
6 A Rebellion against the Government 92
7 Identity Crisis 107
8 Seizing the Legendary Hollow 120
9 Taking On Nashville 136
10 Big Man, Lonely Man 155
11 Brand Magic 166
12 Enemies 178
13 Reborn 191
14 The Final Battle 204
Epilogue Lem’s Trials 215
Afterword The Making of a Legend 227
Notes 235
Bibliography 257
Index 261
