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The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Analysis brings together more than 20 years worth of research by Victor and Carol Tremblay on the United States beer industry from 1950 to the present. As the title advertises, the book offers an incredible wealth of data on nearly all aspects of the beer industry in the latter half of the twentieth century. Any economic historian interested in industrial organization, firm strategy, or alcoholic beverages would benefit from reading this book because of the synthetic account it offers of the evolution and consolidation of the beer industry. Although most of the data cover the period after 1950, for those interested in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the authors include graphs of production and consumption dating back to 1863 (in chapter 1) and brief descriptions of the founding of all of the companies that were prominent in the post-World War II period (in chapter 4).
The book is organized into ten chapters that cover various aspects of the industry including: demand for and cost of producing beer (chapter 2), industry concentration (chapter 3), the leading brewers (chapter 4), imports and specialty brewers (chapter 5), proliferation of products and brands (chapter 6), strategic issues (chapter 7), and performance and policy issues (chapters 8 and 9).
The introduction provides interesting and important background information on how beer is brewed, key segments of the industry today, trends in per capita beer consumption in the United States, and how the...