This book examines the misty origins of uisce beatha -- the water of life -- and tells the intriguing, colorful and controversial story of Irish whiskey before it earned its place as a world-renowned spirit. It is a story of passion and violence, corruption and skullduggery, of political intrigue and commercial duplicity. The illicit liquor industry of nineteenth-century, impoverished Ireland, the source of many a yarn, is remembered with affection. A section of the book deals with the most famous distilleries and the more than two-centuries-old Dublin distilling tradition.