In the tradition of Rich Cohen’s Sweet and Low and Sean Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of it All, a memoir of a city, an industry, and a dynasty in decline, and the story of a young artist’s struggle to find her way out of the ruins. Frances Stroh’s earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million. But behind the beautiful façade lay a crumbling foundation. Detroit’s economy collapsed with the retreat of the automotive industry to the suburbs and abroad and likewise the Stroh family found their wealth and legacy disappearing. As their fortune dissolved in little over a decade, the family was torn apart internally by divorce and one family member's drug bust; disagreements over the management of the business; and disputes over the remaining money they possessed. Even as they turned against one another, looking for a scapegoat on whom to blame the unraveling of their family, they could not anticipate that even far greater tragedy lay in store. Featuring beautiful evocative photos throughout, Stroh’s memoir is elegantly spare in structure and mercilessly clear-eyed in its self-appraisal—at once a universally relatable family drama and a great American story.

The problem with most personal finance and investing books is that they complicate simple ideas and contain so much detail nobody ever actually reads them. Beer Money is different. It can be read in an afternoon and presents financial concepts using something you're already familiar with: Beer. Beer Money is organized as a “Pub Crawl to Financial Success.” Each chapter is a clear, actionable step with guidance on financial decisions you may face. Excruciating detail such as valuation metrics for stocks, estate planning, complicated options strategies, etc. are NOT part of this book. Beer Money is written for anyone who wants the basic building blocks of personal finance and investing.You'll learn the differences between investing in stocks, bonds, real estate and commodities. You'll see how to best use a retirement plan like a 401(k), how to budget better and the importance of insurance. There are examples of different investment portfolios, automatic saving and spending plans and a discussion about the different types of investment accounts such as Traditional and Roth IRA's. The use of beer, easy to understand text and pictures (yes, pictures!) and humor make this a book you will actually read and understand. So grab a cold six pack and a comfortable chair and get started on your own pub-crawl to financial security. Cheers!

German, Czech, and Irish immigrants poured into America in the mid-1800s. They brought their language and traditions with them…and their love of brewing and drinking beer. In 1881, Iowa City was a bustling town full of immigrants. The population was exploding, and that meant two things: Fortunes were being made overnight and trouble was afoot. Three large breweries had taken root, sprouting strong and proud in the “Northside” neighborhood. In one generation the brewers became wealthy and powerful men. They also came to be known as “The Beer Mafia.” The more powerful the brewers grew, the more passionate the ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union became about abolishing alcohol altogether. They took their fight to the saloon, the street, and the Statehouse, preaching prohibition. Conrad Graf, J.J. Englert and John Dostal thought of themselves as honest businessmen capitalizing on America’s explosive growth by simply providing a product people wanted. Vernice Armstrong thought they were selling sin and destroying everything that made America great, one beer at a time. She made it her mission in life to bring them down, but they weren’t about to go down without a fight. Blending real-life historical figures with compelling fictional characters, Beer Money is the story of how the brewers and “Teetotalers” slammed head-on into each other, turning the prairie red with blood. This is a tale of how the seemingly innocuous love of brewing and drinking beer became the flashpoint, sparking events that would shape America for a generation.

A member of the Van Munching brewing dynasty offers stories about the personalities, feuds, fads, and follies of the beer business.

Monthly Financial Planner8.5 x 11Columns to write down your expenses.

Beer Money is an artist sketchbook of traditional tattoo designs by tattooist Devin Sheehy

"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families. Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are." When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy. With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)—Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.