In TRAVELS WITH BARLEY: A Journey Through Beer Culture in America, Ken Wells takes readers on a witty, literate and informative adventure down America?0?8s River of Beer?0?3a $75 billion juggernaut coursing through the heart of American commerce and through the hearts, minds and passions of 84 million beer drinkers. The book takes us, literally, down the mighty Mississippi, from Minnesota to Louisiana, in a quest to find the mythical Perfect Beer Joint (a journey, Wells reminds his readers, that "a man on an expense account ought not to be too eager to finish"). Along the way, he takes us to The World?0?8s Largest Six-Pack and to a DuBuque, Iowa, watering hole once owned by Al Capone. He examines the curiously controversial question of whether Elvis drank beer; explores the under-examined role of the Beer Goddess in contemporary beer retailing; tells how Budweiser won the Lager Wars; and bears witness to the birth of the Spontaneous Beer Joint on a New Orleans street corner. And there are entertaining diversions up quirky side-waters where readers will learn answers to questions such as: Do beer yeast rustlers really exist? Does Big Beer hate Little Beer? Was the Pilgrims?0?8 landing at Plymouth Rock really just a beer play? And what exactly is the Extreme Beer Movement and can it succeed in its goal to make 50-proof brew? Wells also brings serious reportage to an industry whose roots run to the bedrock of American history and whose grassroots political clout is such that its lobby groups are considered among Washington?0?8s most powerful. But TRAVELS WITH BARLEY is, at its heart, a narrative reflecting America through the prism of a beer glass; a land in which the beer joint, to paraphrase Thoreau, "compares favorably with the church" as a place where people ordinary and extraordinary gather to find solace, friendship and camaraderie.