Beer's history is a tale of gamblers and entrepreneurial visionaries, of ambition and passion. It is the tale of Frederick Pabst, a sea captain who entered the beer business when he married a brewer's daughter and, forty years later, was at the helm of the world's largest brewery-and the tale of Adolphus Busch, his greatest rival. Of Ken Grossman, a California bicycle repairman who built a brewery, Sierra Nevada, with his own two hands. Of Howard Hyde Russell and Wayne Wheeler, who established the organization that produced Prohibition. Of Carl Conrad, who imagined an American version of a Bohemian beer, one he called Budweiser, and Otto Lademan, the St. Louis brewer who tried to steal it from him. Of the Busch, Yuengling, and Leinenkugel families, who have kept their family businesses alive from one generation to the next, in one of the most competitive and volatile of industries.