Gin

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Gin tastes like Christmas to some and rotten pine chips to others, but nearly everyone familiar with the spirit holds immediate gin nostalgia.

The etymology of the word dates to the year 1200 and is synonymous for "beginning." Although early medical textbooks treated it as a healing agent, the earliest alchemists claimed that gin was Satan's tool. In more recent times, the gin trade consolidated the commercial and political power of nations and prompted a social campaign against women. Gin has been used successfully as a defense for murder; been held accountable for outbreaks of melancholia in 18th-century England; and has been advertised as an abortifacient.

From its earliest distillation days to the current craft model, gin plays a powerful cultural role-one that is arguably older, broader, and more complex than any other spirit.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

About the Author

Shonna Milliken Humphrey is the author of Show Me Good Land and Dirt Roads and Diner Pie. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Salon. For two years, she was a food writer for The Maine Sunday Telegram.