Brewing a Boycott

“Integrating archival records from activists, mainstream and grassroots periodicals, and oral history interviews, Allyson Brantley offers an illuminating account of how boycotters organized a diverse coalition to fight the anti-union, discriminatory practices of Coors and its neoliberal ideology. Labor historians, social movement scholars, and researchers who study how politics influence consumer behavior will find notable contributions in Brantley’s book.” – Business History Review

“This impressive book sheds new light on the history of intersectional activism and conservative politics, as well as labor and business history. It is one of the most clarifying, empirically rich analyses of post-1960s activism ever written.”—Pacific Historical Review

“The text is sure to result in major contributions for future research and scholarship on this important subject matter. Every library should obtain a copy for collections on labor, grassroots politics, and social movements history.”—CHOICE

“Excellent. . . . Brantley’s examination of the boycotts themselves reveals a great deal about the complexities involved when different groups work together towards common goals.”—Society for US Intellectual History

“A fast-paced and lively narrative. . . . Brantley is a skilled thinker and writer who has offered food studies scholars, labor historians, and residents of the Rocky Mountain West an important new contribution.”—Gastronomica

“Brewing a Boycott is an energizing, engaging, and richly researched account of the multiple coalitions that won power through the years-long boycott of Coors Beer.” — Emily K. Hobson, author of Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left

“A concise, accessible, and eminently readable history of the Coors boycott. Activists are front and center in this comprehensive look at the campaign in all of its complexity and permutations.” — Lauren Araiza, author of To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers

“Allyson Brantley has produced a remarkable history of the Coors boycott, convincingly showing why we should regard it as one of the American left’s defining struggles in the 1970s and ‘80s. With a broad narrative sweep and impressive research, Brewing a Boycott reveals how a broad coalition of unions, Chicano organizers, civil rights activists, and gay and lesbian liberation groups waged a decades-long struggle for workers’ rights, even as the Coors family became national leaders in the era’s ascendant conservative movement.”—Joshua Clark Davis, author of From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs