(2014) has been translated into Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, and Chinese. He is also the author of The Political Power of Bad Ideas: Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave (2010).
Schrad applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition, and reported the following:
Smashing the Liquor Machine is a global history of temperance and prohibitionism. But it is not a simple historical chronology, but more of a work of comparative politics in which we look at what temperance and prohibitionism were all about in the rest of the world in order to see if there are any historical lessons that we can apply to our conventional understanding of prohibition history in the United States. Happily, there is! What we find in looking at temperance and prohibition history in global context is that it wasn't motivated by the stereotypical conservative, bible-thumping evangelicals of our popular imagery, but of a wide swath of socialists, liberals, nationalists, abolitionists, suffragists and progressives, all of whom were united in their opposition not against alcohol (i.e. the stuff in the bottle), but the predatory liquor traffic that got people addicted to liquor for their own private profit. So what we find around the world with temperance and prohibitionism is a global movement for liberation from the very worst excesses of capitalism, and against the very state that profited from the misery of its own people.Learn more about Smashing the Liquor Machine at the Oxford University Press website.
In that global tour, page 99 finds us in the German Empire of the mid-nineteenth century, struggling to explain why temperance seemed to be a dead issue, and didn't have the conventional hallmarks of temperance organization--social organizations, lodges, abstinence pledges--that we're accustomed to in the United States. The answer is that--in a closed autocracy like the German Empire--social organizations had no means to influence government policy, so movements to rein-in the excesses of the conservative Junker aristocracy that profited from their cut-rate schnapps came mostly from liberals and socialists within the bureaucracy in defense of urban workers. Here's an excerpt:Prussian schnapps was not some refined, upper-class drink, but rather a cheap, potent high that even the poorest German could afford—much like Russian vodka just across the frontier to the east. As in Russia, too, it was the means by which the conservative Prussian state and Junker aristocracy got rich off the peasants’ misery. Germany even had its own version of the vodka-soaked tsarist kabak: the dank, dimly lit Schnapshölle (schnapps hall). German paupers often stumbled in alone and got thoroughly drunk as quickly as possible, before being cast out by an unscrupulous tavern-keeper.Though it is suggestive of some of the broader themes of the book, I do not think that page 99, read in isolation, gives a good sense of the scope of the entire 772-page tome (admittedly a tall order).
Unlike distilled schnapps, fermented beer was too bulky and (prior to bottling technology) spoiled too easily to be transported far. Consequently, every German city of any size had one or more local breweries—often with their own unique brews—that catered mostly to local workers. The beer halls of Bavaria and the industrialized cities of western Germany were bright, airy, rambunctious places for industrial workers to unwind after a long day of work. Unlike the dank Schnapshölle, going to the beer hall was less about getting plastered and more about fraternization, bonding, and even political organization. In the wake of industrialization, beer became the symbol of the working class, while schnapps was scorned as a poor person’s drink.
The book is not primarily about Germany or bureaucracy, but chapter 4 is important in getting a sense of the different "flavors" and forms that opposition to the liquor traffic took in various countries all over the globe.
Yet, I take Ford's page 99 test to be not simply about subject matter, but as he says: "the quality of the whole," which could be interpreted in different ways. In writing Smashing the Liquor Machine, I tried to populate the book with biographical vignettes of larger-than-life historical figures to help maintain the reader's attention through 700+ pages. On page 99, there are no larger-than-life figures, but rather a necessary telling of the historical context. So in terms of writing style, it might not be representative either. However, if by "quality" you're looking at how well the argument is supported by empirical evidence culled from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, I feel confident that the materials on page 99 are as representative as that found on any other page.
--Marshal Zeringue
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