December 5, 2008  What's new? The usual, which is to say: not much. I'm working on the new book (see below) and that is proceeding well -- or as well any work-in-progress proceeds. (Many days, frankly, I feel like tossing my keyboard out the window and then jumping out with it.)  Mostly, however, life consists of this, that, and the other thing. I was quoted recently in a New Yorker magazine article; you can read that here.  I wrote two op-ed pieces about the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition. One is at U.S. News. The other ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer.    What occupies most of my time these days is my new book, working title (please! don't hold me to this...) Carnivore Nation: Meat and the Making of Modern America. I'll explore how Americans have raised, processed, sold, cooked, and eaten meat in the past 140 years. The subject is fascinating and I'm having a great time. Otherwise, what's "new" is anything at my blog. You can also get there by clicking the "blog" link above or by clicking the beer glass at ambitiousbrew.com. I know that blogs are supposed to focused! and targeted! and specifc! and consistent! And the entries are supposed to be brief. I pretty much fail in every category. Well, okay, the entries are brief. And you won't get a headache trying to read it because I make each post easy on the eye by keeping the paragraphs short and leaving plenty of white space in between each one. Otherwise, my blog contains (mostly random) musings about beer, meat, and life's daily weirdness. Although (patting myself on the back here), I did manage to blog regularly about the 75th anniversary of the return of legal beer and the Big Beer Story of '08, the sale of Anheuser-Busch to InBev. Find all those entries (and more!) by checking the index at the blog. Thanks for stopping by -- and for making books and reading part of your life.  September 9, 2008 Note and apologies:   I just learned that my website "innards" got hit (okay, attacked) by, well, something and for a short time, part of the system ended up online. Worse yet, what showed up on the internet was attached to a set of names and addresses about which I knew nothing.   The problem has been taken care of, but in case you were one of those people whose name suddenly ended up in on a list that appeared to be attached to my website, my apologies.   Frankly, I think it's amazing  things like this don't happen more often. I'm a fanatic about keeping my computer and everything remotely attached to my blog and websites "clean," but -- shit happens! Again, apologies to anyone who inadvertently got caught in the attack.  Otherwise -- what's new? The paperback edition of Ambitious Brew, available at any bookstore (online or off). This op-ed piece in the Washington Post. Plus an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, which you can read here. (Of course, if you're reading this in, say, 2009, none of the above is particularly "new" and you can conclude that I'm a lazy dolt.) May 31, 2007: Today's Wall Street Journal includes a summary of a piece I wrote for the new issue of Historically Speaking, the news bulletin of the Historical Society. You can read it here. March 10, 2006: On April 7, A&E will air the new beer documentary "The American Brew." The film was funded by the Here's to Beer foundation and produced and directed by Roger Sherman at Florentine Films. I'm the beer Bracketeer in the new book THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST. Bracketing (about which I knew nothing before I was asked to do this) is a hugely entertaining way to choose everything from a child's name to your all-time favorite movie. The book is available at bookstores nationwide, both on and off-line! Stan Hieronymous of realbeer.com has posted an interview that he did with me (he emailed the questions; I sent him my replies). You can read it by going to his realbeer blog Then just type in the word "ogle" in the search box and you'll find links to all three parts of the interview. Thanks, Stan! There's a nice review in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Read it here. There are also reviews in the current issue of All About Beer magazine (on newsstands) and in Celebrator magazine (not sure, frankly, where it's sold...... there's a website but the current contents aren't archived there). (And who can blame 'em? They gotta sell what they make, not give it away!) There's plenty of "news" and if I had more than two seconds, I'd even pass some of it on! The Great American Beer Festival has come and gone. It's VERY noisy, but fabulous people! The World Beer Festival has come and gone. More fabulous people; not so noisy. On to the west coast -- Portland and Seattle; see the Events list for details -- and then home and then off to Milwaukee and Minnepeapolis. (Again, details under "Events." AMBITIOUS BREW is now available at Amazon. The "official" release date remains October 2 -- but this is all pretty arbitrary (at least in my opinion!) and I for one have never figured out why Amazon decides to ship books when it does. But there ya go -- the book is available from at least one outlet. On September 8, I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual meeting of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America (BCCA). I met a lot of interesting people (including a guy who built a second house specifically to hold his collection of beer stuff and the guy who holds the Guinness Record for largest collection of bottle openers). I spoke about the book to an audience of about 30 people (more or less) -- and fielded a terrific set of questions from those who came to hear me. Good people. Lively conversation! I attended the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, Wisconsin on August 12. Had a wonderful time and was interviewed there by Steve Mosqueda and Sean Benjamin of DrinkingandWriting.com That interview should air Sept. 3 on their radio program of the same name. Check it out online here. There was a nice piece about the Key West book in the Gainesville Sun in August. You can read it here In July, the fine (and funny!) folks at BeerRadio had me on their program. That interview is now available online and as a podcast. Go to BeerRadio. Then click on "Listen Online." It's the July 15 episode: "History of American Beer." In June, I traveled to St. Louis to be filmed for a documentary about beer. It's being produced for the "Mega Factories" series on the National Geographic channel on cable television. It will air in early 2007. Another documentary about beer, this one to focus on the production and history of beer, will also debut on TV in early 2007. It's being produced and directed by Roger Sherman of Florentine Films (Roger has made many of the American Masterpiece progams from PBS and is the business partner of Ken Burns). Roger and his crew filmed me for that documentary last April.