Brooke Barbier is a public historian who received her PhD in American history from Boston College, researching Boston’s social and cultural life during and after the American Revolution. While earning her graduate degree, she taught history at Boston College and Stonehill College.

Two of Brooke's favorite things are history and beer, so in 2013 she founded Ye Olde Tavern Tours, which offers tours of Boston’s historic sites and taverns (beer is included!). She is the author of the award-winning King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father and Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire. Her latest book, Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution examines the influence of alcohol on the founding generation and received a starred review from Booklist. She is invited to speak all over the country and has been interviewed by diverse media outlets including the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Boston Globe. She is originally from San Diego, CA and has lived in Boston for many years.

The Concord Free Public Library presents

Fowler In Fact Book Club

with Author Brooke Barbier

Wednesday, October 28, 2026
11:30 am

Wright Tavern, 2 Lexington Rd. Concord, MA

Join the Fowler In Fact Book Club for a special author talk at the Wright Tavern in Concord Center at 10 am.

For October we are fortunate to have Brooke Barbier join us to discuss her book Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution.

America’s founding generation drank a staggering amount of alcohol by today’s standards.

It influenced their politics, built and sustained their relationships, and drove the economy. Booze was not a small part of colonial society, nor covertly consumed in private spaces—it was integral to American life. 

Historians have been reluctant to discuss the influence of alcohol on the founding of the United States, but it is necessary if we want to gain a full picture of the movement—it’s time to reveal the drunken side of the American Revolution.  

​In Cocked and Boozy—two of Benjamin Franklin’s two hundred terms for drunkenness—public historian Brooke Barbier examines the role that alcohol played in spurring, binding, and winning the American Revolution and how it shaped the nascent United States. Every chapter concludes with an eighteenth-century cocktail recipe made for modern tastes, so readers can participate in their own historic tippling.

The intoxicating story begins in 1763 after the end of the French and Indian War and spans until 1800, with the presidential election of Thomas Jefferson. During these nearly four decades, Americans witnessed unprecedented disorder and prodigious growth, and through it all—powering it, in fact—was alcohol. Put simply, drink helped transform British subjects into Americans.