The saloon and the mission [electronic resource] : addiction, conversion, and the politics of redemption in American culture / Eoin F. Cannon.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-309) and index.

Introduction : addiction recovery and the world as it should be -- The drunkard's conversion and the salvation of the social order -- "What a radical found in Water Street" -- The varieties of conversion polemic -- New Deal individualism and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous -- Literary realism and the secularization of the drunkard's conversion -- The drinker's epiphany in modernist literature -- The iceman cometh and the drama of disillusion -- Recovery memoir and the crack-up of liberalism -- Conclusion : addiction in a new era of recovery.

Description based on print version record.