Readers won’t look at temperance the same way once they take Schrad’s inventive and persuasive thesis into account.
A wide-ranging, thoroughly revisionist history of the effort to ban alcohol from the public sphere across the globe.
“Both in the United States and around the world,” writes Villanova political science professor Schrad, “the true target of prohibitionism—the liquor traffic—was overwhelmingly the purview of powerful, white, self-identified Christians.” These purveyors of liquor found opponents in men and women who viewed the matter differently: Enslaving people to the addiction of alcohol helped the ruling class maintain control, subjugated colonial and marginalized peoples, and otherwise served the interests of both the wealthy minority and the state. Proclaimed Carrie Nation, tellingly, as she smashed the mirrors and glassware in saloon after saloon, “You wouldn’t give me the vote, so I had to use a rock!” Yet, as Schrad observes, Nation wasn’t above a glass of beer, even as a certain prohibitionist named V.I. Lenin, who denounced the imperial monopoly on liquor as the prop of a feeble and failing state, liked to quaff a brew himself from time to time. The author clearly and engagingly shows how the enemy wasn’t alcohol as such, but instead “the exploitative selling of addictive substances.” Activists, he writes, argued that propping up “moneyed elites upon the misery and addiction of society was no longer appropriate.” In this comprehensive, wholly convincing study, Schrad examines a number of famous prohibitionists, including Tolstoy, Gandhi, William Jennings Bryan, and even Theodore Roosevelt, the last of whom tempered his temperance leanings with the view that prohibition should be a local rather than federal affair. The author also links the prohibition movement to abolitionism, civil rights activism, anti-colonialism, and feminism, and he attributes the view of that movement as a collection of party poopers to our changing views of liberty, which have devolved to a kind of me-first, you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do ethic as opposed to the notion of entire peoples living without chains.
Readers won’t look at temperance the same way once they take Schrad’s inventive and persuasive thesis into account.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-084157-7
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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