"Drinking Matters" offers the first comparative survey of public houses in preindustrial Europe. Drawing on a vast range of primary sources, this long-term study establishes inns and taverns as principal communication sites in local communities. Perennially contested and continuously renegotiated, they catered for basic human needs as well as infinite forms of social exchange. Close scrutiny of regulation, premises and socio-cultural services sheds new light on key processes like state building, confessionalization and the emergence of a public sphere.