Favorites of 2012: Nonfiction

58.5 of the books I read in 2012 were nonfiction: 34 general nonfiction, 15 memoirs, and 7 essay collections (the 0.5 comes from an anthology that was a mix of fiction and nonfiction). That’s 1.5 more nonfiction books than I read last year. 2012 was also pretty awesome because this blog was a finalist in

Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America’s Kings of Beer

For over a hundred years, Anheuser-Busch — specifically Budweiser — was an American empire. It’s a company that managed to survive Prohibition, the Great Depression, and a finicky market that wanted to stray from an old blue collar beverage in favor of newer “light” beers, wines, and specialty microbrews. Yet the company was always able