<< Back to Synopsis Inspiration for Ambitious Brew Writers don't find book ideas; the ideas find them. That was certainly true in the case of Ambitious Brew. In the spring of 2000, I had recently finished my book about Key West and was trying to figure out what to write next. I investigated and then discarded one idea after another. One day about two months into this fruitless search, I headed out on a shopping expedition to an Italian grocery store that's been owned by the same family for more than one hundred years. As I neared the store, I could see it a few blocks ahead (the only two-story building in a neighborhood of one-story houses). I eyed its facade with its easily visible legend: "Est. 1902." I drove along, thinking about stores of a century ago, wondering what they were like then. Suddenly, a few blocks ahead of me, a truck crossed the street, rolling across my line of vision. A very shiny, very red truck, with one word emblazoned across the side: "Budweiser." That's it!, I thought to myself. I'll write about beer! By the time I got home, however, My Great Idea resembled a balloon the day after the party: "Surely," I thought, "beer has been done to death. There must be fifty histories out there. I doubt the world needs another one." A half hour's search of online library catalogs revealed the surprising truth: there was no history of American beer, at least not the kind that my brain was already beginning to fashion. For a historian, that's not necessarily a good thing: if no one's written about it, it's possible that there's no story to tell. So I hunted down what appeared to be the only history of beer in America, a book published in 1962. I read that, and then perused a handful of other books that contained bits of beer's history. I decided that, yes, there was a story and I would tell it. I wrote a proposal that sketched the structure and narrative of my proposed manuscript. My agent sold it, and I started the research in earnest. And that's when things got interesting. Very interesting. Over the next four years, my carefully outlined narrative flew out the window as I uncovered one plot twist after another. Nothing, and I mean nothing, in that original proposal ended up in the book. The story of beer in America turned out to be far more complex, and fascinating, than I dreamed possible. I had a great time discovering and telling this marvelous story. I hope you have as much fun reading it. << Back to Synopsis