Smashing the Liquor Machine
A Global History of Prohibition

This is my 372nd booze book. I’ve read a plethora of American Prohibition books… including every American book Schrad cited. This book is by far the best. This book made me uncomfortable as it challenged much, if not most, of what I’ve read about Prohibition. Growth is good… and this book is great.......more

A comparatively young scholar, Mark Lawrence Schrad has so far made alcohol prohibition the focus of his academic career. In this hefty volume, the product of research in 17 countries, Schrad argues that prohibition was not the creation of urban-rural, anti-immigrant, anti-minority cultural conflict......more

This was an amazingly well-written book that undoes a lot of the myths surrounding prohibition- namely that it was a movement led by rural white reactionaries and evangelicals. Schrad internationalizes the movement for us and tells of how the industrialized liquor trade was an instrument of colonial......more

Carrie Nation meant well. Booze destroys and the social cost to society is immense. The prohibitionists’ intentions were noble and they wanted to destroy ‘big alcohol’, not drinkers or the drunks. Their intentions led to prohibition no matter their original good intentions, and the proverbial path t......more

This book had a lot of promise that I'm not sure it lived up to. It was clear from the beginning that Lawrence was going to take a sort of "anti-colonialist" or social justice type look at history, which I'm already suspicious of (not because I disagree, but more because it feels like it's going int......more