Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Book reviews in SHAD 22/1 (Fall 2007)

Book reviews in the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 22/1 (Fall 2007) include:

Diana L. Ahmad, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusioin Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West, reviewed by Guenter Risse

Brooks McNamara, The New York Concert Saloon: The Devil's Own Nights, digitized edition, reviewed by Peter Bailey

Roy Bronton, The Abandoned Narcotic: Kava and Cultural Instability in Melanesia, reviewed by Lamont Lindstrom

Paul Dimeo, A History of Drug Use in Sport 1876-1976: Beyond Good and Evil, reviewed by Neil Carter

Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy and Andrew Sherratt, eds., Consuming Habits: Global and Historical Perspectives on How Cultures Define Drugs, 2nd ed., reviewed by Alex Mold

John Hailman, Thomas Jefferson on Wine, reviewed by Noelle Plack

Mark Simpson, Tracy Shildrick and Robert MacDonald, eds., Drugs in Britain: Supply, Consumption and Control, reviewed by Susanne MacGregor

James H. Mills and Patricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empire: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, c. 1500-c. 1930, reviewed by Jesse S. Palsetia

Pamela Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Advertising, 1930-1990, reviewed by Amy Mittelman

Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: A Biography, reviewed by Erika Dyck

Guinness biography and history (book review essay)

Martyn Cornell, in Brewery History: The Journal of the Brewery History Society 127 (2008): 75-80.  Review of Patrick Guinness, Arthur's Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness (London: Peter Owen, 2008); Bill Yenne, Guinness: The 250-Year Quest for the Perfect Pint (Hoboken: John Wiley, 2007).

Drinking among Lakota Sioux (book review)

Philip A. May, review of Beatrice Medicine, Drinking and Sobriety among the Lakota Sioux (2006), in American Indian Culture and Research Journal 31/3 (2007): 215-217. 1950s-1970s.

Reflections of a high-end wine merchant (book review)

Jonathan Yardley reviews the memoir of Neal I. Rosenthal, Reflections of a Wine Merchant here.

American wines (book review)

Giuseppe LoRusso, book review of Maurice Bensoussan, Vite Americane. Storia Del Vino Negli Stati Uniti, in Food & Foodways: History & Culture of Human Nourishment 16/1 (January 2008): 92-95.

Cunningham reviews Lerner's Dry Manhattan (book review)

Patricia Cunningham reviews Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (2007) online at H-Urban here.

Eight Million Sots in the Naked City

For Reason, Jackson Kuhl reviews Michael Lerner's Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City,
Alastair Moray's The Diary of a Rum-Runner, and Harold Waters's Smugglers of Spirits.

Find "Eight Million Sots in the Naked City: How Prohibition was imposed on, and
rejected by, New York" here.

Pergram reviewing Lerner's Dry Manhattan (book review)

Thomas R. Pergram, book review of Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (2007), in American Historical Review 113/1 (February 2008): 203-04.

Thornton reviews Cook's Paying the Tab (book review)

K. Austin Kerr brings our attention to Mark Thornton, "Review of Philip J. Cook, Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control." EH.Net Economic History Services, Apr 2 2008. URL. Thornton is the author of The Economics of Prohibition (1991).

Cigarettes, Alcohol, and the Question of Corporate Responsibility (review)

Sally H. Clarke, "Cigarettes, Alcohol, and the Question of Corporate Responsibility," Reviews in American History 35/4 (December 2007): 636-641.  Review essay for Pamela E. Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness (2007).

Drinking for England (book review)

Fergus Linnane, Drinking for England: The Great English Drinkers and their Times (JR Books, 2008), was reviewed by Kathryn Hughes in the Guardian, 29 March 2008, here.

Learning from "Brewing Battles" (book review)

For a favorable review of Amy Mittelman's Brewing Battles, see the blog Appelation Beer here. By the way, the reviewer notes that April 7, 2008 will mark the 75th anniversary of the legal production of beer in the USA. Finally, Amy Mittelman has her own beer blog here.

Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals (book review)

Sean Redding reviews Patrick McAllister, Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2006) here.

Mittelman's Brewing Battles (book review)

George Lenker reviews Amy Mittelman, Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer (NY: Algora Publishing, 2008) here.

Beer & cider in Ireland (book review)

For a favorable review of Iorwerth Griffiths, Beer & Cider in Ireland: The Complete Guide (Liberties Press, 2007), with considerable historical material, see here.

Brewery History, no. 126 (2007)

In addition to its Newsletter (most recently, Christmas 2007, no. 40), the Brewery History Society publishes a journal with illustrated and footnoted articles and book reviews that today is called Brewery History. It most recent issue is no. 126 (2007)

TOC

Rob Woolley, "Sidney Milnes Hawkes and the Swan Brewery, Walham Green, c. 1850"

Humphrey Jackson, "An Account of the Discovery of the Manner of Making Isinglass in Russia; with a Particular Description of its Manufacture in England, from the Produce of British Fisheries"

Frank Pike, Hall and Woodhouse Limited: The War Years, 1939-1945"

Peter Dyer, "Randle Holmes and 17th Century Brewing, Malting and Coopering Terminology"

Mary Miles, review of Somerset Pubs by Andrew Swift and Kirsten Elliott (Bath: Akeman Press, 2007)

John Greenaway, review of The Local: A History of the English Pub by Paul Jennings (Stroud: Tempus, 2007)

David W . Gutzke, JBHS Bibliography. It includes such publications as Victor F. Gammon, Desire, Drink and Death on English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900 (Ashgare: Aldershot, 2007), notably the essay titled "Nothing Like Drinking: English Spectacular Song and Strong Drink."

Drip Grind: Taylor Clark's Weak Case against Starbucks (book review)

Doron Taussig unfavorably reviews Taylor Clark's Starbucked in Washington Monthly here. By the way, Taussig is a non-coffee drinker but read the second half of the book in a couple of Starbucks.

How's Your Drink? (book review)

In the Weekly Standard, 24 December 2007, Christopher Hitchens reviews Eric Felten, How's Your Drink? Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well (Agate Surrey). For the review, see here.

American temperance lyrics (book review)

David M. Fahey reviews Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes of the American Temperance Movement, ed. Paul D. Sanders (University of Missouri Press, 2006), in Historian 69/4 (2007).

Starbucked (book review)

In the New York Times, 16 December 2007, P.J. O'Rourke provides a mostly unenthusiastic review of Taylor Clark, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture (Little, Brown, 2007) here. In his "Venti Capitalists" O'Rourke prefers Clark's attack on Starbucks as a capitalist villain more than Clark's explanation for Starbucks' success. A few details in the book cited by the reviewer seem arguable: for instance, the book says that there were only 585 coffee houses in the USA in 1987 as compared with more than 24,000 today. Such statistics depend on the definition of a coffee house, not provided in the review and don't know whether it is in the book. For the first chapter of Clark's book, see here. For another review, see Adelle Waldman in the New York Observer here. By the way, New York City acquired its first Starbucks in 1994.

Stokes reviewing Claybaugh. Novel of Purpose (book review)

Jack S. Blocker draws attention (on the ADHS listserv) to the H-SHGAPE book review by Claudia Stokes of the book by Amanda Claybaugh, The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World, which deals in part with temperance. For the review, see here.

Imbibe! (book review)

Adam Rathe reviews in the Brooklyn Paper, December 1, 2007, a book by David Wondrich, Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to ‘Professor’ Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar (Perigee, 2007). For more, see here. Wondrich is now writing a book about alcoholic punch.

Wine-tasting (book review)

Barry C. Smith, Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine (Signal Books, 2007), reviewed by Christopher Shields, TLS, 28 November 2007 here.

Hoverson's history of Minnesota breweries (book review)

Doug Hoverson's Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) is briefly reviewed by Bill King in the (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Star-Tribune here. One detail: malt liquor was invented at a Minneapolis-based brewery in the 1940s. Hoverson is considering doing a parallel book for Wisconsin. He is a high school history teacher and a home brewer, as well as associate editor for American Breweriana Journal, published by and for collectors. For an interview with Hoverson, look here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Acknowledgments

From Barley to Bar Stool: The Art and Science of Brewing
Measuring Beer

1. Pioneer Brewing
Becoming a Brewer

2. Fewer Ales, More Rails: Brewing Fills the State

3. Patronize Home Industry: The Glory Days of the Small-Town Brewer
Collecting Breweriana

4. Craft Becomes Industry
Brewery Architecture

5. From Temperance to Prohibition
Malt Tonic

6. New Jobs, New Containers, New Rules: Minnesota Beer Returns
Brewery Jobs in the 1930s

7. Sky Blue Waters, Bland Yellow Beer
Brewery Advertising
“From the land of sky blue waters . . . wah-a-ters”

8. The Waters Turn Dark Amber
Brewery Preservation

Minnesota Breweries: From the Territorial Era to the Twenty-First Century
Minnesota Brewpubs: Pairing Beer and Food
Notes
Index

To cork or not to cork? (book review)

In the Washington Post, 18 November 2007, Jane Black reviews George M. Taber, To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle. For the review, see here.

Mark Edward Lender reviews Eric Burns' Spirits of America (book review)

Mark Edward Lender reviews Eric Burns, The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol, in Indiana Magazine of History 102/1 (2006): 54-56

Eighteenth-Century Coffee-Houses and coffee today (book review)

Bee Wilson reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, 31 October 2007, Markman Ellis, ed., Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, 4 vols. (Pickering & Chatto, 2007). For the review, see here. Putting her review in a contemporary context, Wilson begins with references to the film Black Gold and Ethiopian farmers.

Jerry Thomas (1830?-1885), America's most innovative bartender (book review)

William Grimes reviews in the New York Times, 31 October 2007, David Wondrich's Imbibe! (Perigee Books, 2007), a biography of the flamboyant and creative bartender Jerry Thomas (1830?-1885) and an annotated recipe book. For more, see here. Thomas and his fellow bartenders revolutionized the drinking of spirits in nineteenth-century America. A fuller title of Wondrich's book is Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar.

Xhosa beer drinking rituals (book review)

Sean Redding reviewed in H-SAfrica the book by Patrick McAllister, Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals (2006). For the review, see here.

Martin Lynn on Drink in 17th cent. England (book review)

Martin Lynn, review of Adam Smyth, ed., A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-century England, in Food, Culture and Society 9/1 (Spring 2006): 121-123.

Moonshine and murder in southwestern Virginia (book review)

Barbara Case Summerlin, The Legacy of Ada: A Mountain Woman (Hickory Hill, 2007) is reviewed at length in a local newspaper here. The book focuses on George Peters who was hanged in 1907 for the murder of an anti-moonshine minister in Carroll County.

Bootleggers: the Hollow Men of NASCAR (book review)

Charlie Danoff emphasizes bootlegging in the origins of NASCAR racing in his review of Neal Thompson, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR. For the review, see here.

Mark Knights reviews Social Life of Coffee (book review)

On H-Albion, August 2007, Mark Knights reviewed Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee.

Subject: REV: Knights on Cowan, _The Social Life of Coffee_
From: nekey@eiu.edu
Date: August 28, 2007 12:15:47 PM EDT (CA)

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (August 2007)

Brian Cowan. _The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British
Coffeehouse_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. xii + 364 pp.
Illustrations, bibliography, index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-300-10666-1.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Mark Knights, Department of History,
University of Warwick

The coffee house has figured prominently in recent accounts of the
public sphere and this engaging and interesting book is a timely
contribution to the ongoing debate about the novelty and nature of
this institution. The book tackles four themes that have generated
much interest: the scientific culture of the seventeenth century; the
coffee house in relation to the Habermasian public sphere and
communicative practices; coffee and the consumer revolution; and
gendered spaces. The coffee house, Brian Cowan argues, was the
product of the virtuosi, the resort of the bourgeois public, the
locale for the consumption of an exotic drug and a forum for male
sociability. The book is interested in the intersection between
"curiosity, commerce, and civil society" (p. 2) and as such cuts
across several historical sub-disciplines to good effect. It surveys
the period between 1650, with the establishment of the first coffee
house in Oxford in 1650, and the 1720s, when tea overtook coffee sales.

Early chapters of the book explore the crucial role played by
virtuosi in stimulating consumer interest in the exoticism of coffee
and propagandizing its virtues (both medicinal and social). It is
then shown how the coffee house became an intrinsic part of urban
life. Coffee's success, it is suggested, was in part due to its lack
of intoxication, and hence to its association with sober and
respectable behavior, though it did create considerable anxieties,
explored in the last chapters of the book, about fostering
vituperative political debate and contention. Cowan suggests that as
a commodity coffee was rather slow to take off, but that
entrepreneurial conservatism did eventually give way to dynamism,
especially as the re-export trade boomed. Indeed, British domestic
consumers "figured less and less prominently in this trade over the
course of the eighteenth century" (p. 73). Even so, London coffee
houses were successful because they were versatile. They housed
cabinets of curiosities, clubs of all descriptions, and picture
auctions (the section discussing these is one of the most interesting
parts of the book); moreover, they were closely associated with the
news culture, which "accounts for the popularity of the institution
beyond the virtuoso community after the Restoration" (p. 172).
Chapter 7 provides a good chronological account of attempts to
"police" the coffeehouses, since the "monarchical state" only
"gradually and grudgingly" accepted that they could not be suppressed
(p. 194). Even after the revolution of 1689 a politicized public
sphere was hardly embraced by the government or even by Joseph
Addison and Sir Richard Steele, who attacked the lies, rumors, and
foppishness of the coffeehouse. Fears that coffeehouse society was
"decidedly uncivil and impolite" (p. 229) were commonplace. Indeed,
rather than being seen as a forum for legitimate debate it was often
an arena that de-legitimized partisan views. Thus the aim of coffee
houses was not "to prepare the ground for an age of democratic
revolutions; it was to make the cultural politics of Augustan Britain
safe for an elitist Whig oligarchy" (p. 256), and Whig politeness
"was a form of policing just as stringent and just as socially
exclusive, as Tory persecution" (p. 238). This exclusivity extended
to women, for Cowan argues that "there is no evidence of any woman
actually taking part in a coffee house debate," which were "simply no
place for a lady" (p. 246). He admits that there are a few instances
of genteel women recorded in coffee houses, but usually the women
present were servants or proprietors.

Cowan is at pains to emphasize that "coffee and modernity did not
emerge in tandem," and to distance himself from the idea that coffee
house politics prefigured the rise of modern liberal democracy.
Accordingly, he argues, "later Stuart and early Hanoverian British
history badly remains in need of the strong dose of revisionist
debate that radically transformed studies of the early Stuart
era" (p. 262). Claiming to emphasize the "traditional" as much as the
modern, this book nevertheless also aspires to contribute to a "'post-
revisionist history' of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries" (pp. 3, 262) by steering a middle course between a
reluctance to acknowledge change and a whiggish over-enthusiasm for
it. Thus the coffee house is depicted as fitfully accepted rather
than inevitable; as forged by the virtuosi not merely as the backdrop
against which they performed; as not inevitably hostile to existing
authority; and as ambiguous in its politeness, castigated as much as
embraced.

Yet the nature of this "post-revisionism" is not always clearly
outlined and there is some ambiguity in Cowan's position. Thus part 3
opens with the statement that the "coffee house was a different sort
of place than other public houses in early modern England.... It was
a novel institution. As such it was treated differently" (p. 147).
But three pages later Cowan castigates the accounts of others which
have "a whiggish tendency to explain the rise of the coffee house in
terms of the ways in which it was new" (p. 150) and thirty pages
further on states that, in terms of public hospitality, "a well-
equipped coffeehouse was little different from a tavern" (p. 181) and
that some "were hardly distinguishable from inns" (p. 184). Placing
the coffee house in a wider history of taverns and inns, and other
places of sociable discourse, might indeed have been useful, for it
might have allowed him to engage with the question of how far (if at
all) the ideal of the coffee house's "civil society" differed from
the civic ideal that was intrinsic to notions of provincial urban
self-governance and how far coffee houses' clientele spoke and acted
differently to their alehouse brethren. Is the key difference that
the coffee house widened the scope of debate, breaking urban
magistrate's conventions of secrecy and public discussion, or that
the nature of debate was different?

Further contextualization might have added depth in other respects.
Cowan argues that Britain was "exceptionally receptive" to the
introduction of coffee consumption (p. 30), but some European or
Atlantic comparisons might have been helpful to reinforce this
assertion and to investigate the colonial implications of consumer
behavior. Even within the British focus, the book is almost
exclusively concerned with London. Whilst it is true that "it is only
within this metropolitan context that we may fully understand the
social and political significance of the English coffee house" (p.
153), the proliferation of coffee houses in provincial towns is
scarcely explored and then only to shed light on "the metropolitan
ideal." It would be very interesting to know more about the
provincial perspective, even if this meant going beyond 1720. Indeed,
a further advantage of breaking the 1720 end-point would be that it
would enable a comparison between coffee and tea along Cowan's own
lines of gender, commerce, science, and exoticism.

Yet, despite these criticisms (and one might add that it is a pity
that footnotes appear only at the end of paragraphs, making it
difficult to unravel them), this is a very welcome first book, one
that students and researchers alike will find of great use to help
them understand an important institution that is important for
several current historiographical debates. It is very well
illustrated and nicely produced--it should, like its subject,
stimulate the reader.

Copyright (c) 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list,
and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

Mondavi wine family saga (book and review)

Julia Flynn Siler, House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty (Gotham, 2007). See the review by Lisa Albers here.

Clarence-Smith reviews Cowan's The Social Life of Coffee

From the (London) Institute of Historical Research, "Reviews in History," review by William Clarence-Smith of Brian Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005):

Review: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/clarence-smith.html

Response: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/clarence-smithresp.html

Includes link to Cowan's "Publicity and Privacy in the History of the British Coffeehouse," History Compass, 5:4 (July 2007), 1180-1213; doi: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00440.x.

The review and the author's response look at various theoretical and interpretive issues.

New book review editor for Social History of Alcohol and Drugs

The new book review editor for the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs is Jonathan Reinarz, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His email address is: j.reinarz@bham.ac.uk. He succeeds Elaine Parsons in this office. Those interested in having their work reviewed or contributing a book review should email Dr. Reinarz.

Hilton reviews Gutzke's Pubs and Progressives (book review)

Matthew Hilton favorably reviews David W. Gutzke's Pubs and Progressives in English Historical Review (June, 2007): 852-53.

Beer in medieval and renaissance Europe (book review)

Melitta Weiss Adamson reviews Richard W. Unger's Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37/3 (Winter 2007): 437-438.

Britain's coffeehouses (book review)

Woodruff D. Smith reviews Brian Cowen's The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse in Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37/3 (Winter 2007): 442-443.

Temperance and other voluntary reform organizations in England (book and review)

M.J.D. Roberts, Making English Morals:
Voluntary Association and Moral Reform in Nineteenth-Century England

(Cambridge UP, 2004). For a review by Michael Gorsky, see here.

History of drugs in modern societies (review essay)

Alex Mold, "'Consuming Habits': History of Drugs in Modern Societies," Cultural and Social History 4/2 (June 2007): 261-270. Review essay.

Popular history of magic mushrooms (book review)

Dick Teresi reviews in the New York Times a popular and revisionistic history of magic mushrooms by Andy Letcher, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (Ecco/HarperCollins). For the review, see here.

Canadians in US prohibition (book review)

Norm Goldman reviews Gord Steinke, Crossing the Line: Mobsters and Rumrunners (Folklore Publishing, 2004), about Canadian involvement in criminal violations of American prohibition laws. For more, see here.

Bailey reviews Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives (book review)

Peter Bailey reviews David W. Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives: Reinventing the Public House in England 1896-1960, in Journal of British Studies 45/1 (2006): 397-939.

Walton reviews Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives (book review)

John K. Walton reviews David W. Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives: Reinventing the Public House in England 1896-1960, in American Historical Review 112/2 (April 20007): 592-592.

Mintz reviewing Smith's Caribbean Rum (book review)

The celebrated anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz reviews Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History, in American Historical Review 112/2 (April 2007): 553-554.

American cigarette history (book)

Jonathan Miles, "Tobacco Road," New York Times, 5 May 2007, review of Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (Basic Books, 2007). For more, see here.

Popular history and defence of drinking (book)

Robert R. Harris, "Against Moderation," New York Times, May 5, 2007, review of Barbara Holland, The Joy of Drinking (Bloomsbury, 2007) a short popular history and defence of drinking and much more. For the review, see here. For the first chapter, see here.

Finland's alcohol monopoly, Alko (book review)

Jyrki Iivonen reviews the 75th anniversary history of Alko, Finland's alcohol monopoly, Alkon historia by Dr. Martti Häikiö. For more, see the 13 April 2007 issue of Helsingin Sanomat here.

Another "Dry Manhattan" review

In the Washington Post, April 8, 2007, Jonathan Yardley has added another favorable review of Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City. For more, see here.

Magic mushrooms (book and review)

Andy Letcher, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (Ecco, 2007). For a review by James Kent in DoseNation, see here.

WCTU in Japan (review)

Manako Ogawa. "The 'White Ribbon League of Nations' Meets Japan: The Trans-Pacific Activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1906-1930." Diplomatic History 31:1 (January 2007): 21-50. Reviewed by Erika Kuhlman, Idaho State University Published by H-Diplo on 28 February 2007

Manako Ogawa presents a deft analysis and interpretation of the actions and rhetoric of the Japanese World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its relations with its U.S. counterpart in the early half of the twentieth century. She places her work firmly in the third category of Michael J. Hogan's typology of diplomatic historians: those who connect diplomacy to domestic politics and international circumstances (21-22, n 2).

Her work reveals the ways in which women's organizations—far from offering alternative visions for how the world should work, or would work, if they were in charge—actually united their strategies quite closely with the key ideological practices, such as imperialism and anti-immigration policies, constructed by governments operating in the nearly exclusively male realm of international relations.

The records and publications of the WCTU offer Ogawa a rich minefield of activism and rhetoric through which to test her hypotheses regarding female international activists. The WCTU, founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1874, continued the process of West-to-East cultural and ideological flow begun by Protestant missionaries when it sent Mary Clement Leavitt to Japan to organize a branch of the WCTU in 1886, in an effort to draw Asian women into the WCTU's "white ribbon league of nations."

But the Japanese women encountered by U.S. reformers quickly began to reverse that unidirectional paradigm, in part by carving out their own agenda. They did so, not coincidentally, Ogawa argues, as Japan became a leading imperial power alongside its Western counterparts after its victory over China in 1895, and over Russia in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. Leavitt and other transnational WCTU activists viewed Asian women through Orientalist lenses. Their sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority encouraged them to interpret Japanese women as helpless, passive "daughters" in need of Occidental "mothering," to "dispel the darkness that now rests upon the Orient," according to an 1895 World WCTU publication (26). But the Japanese Union did not always succumb to the secondary role its American sisters wished them to play.

In keeping with more recent international relations scholarship, Ogawa uses cultural evidence to reinforce her claims about the hierarchical nature of relations between the Japanese and American WCTU. Repeatedly throughout the three decades under scrutiny, tensions between the two branches erupted over the wearing of the kimono, an article of traditional Japanese clothing that Western women (and men) found exotic and alluring. At international conferences of the World WCTU, Japanese delegates were repeatedly asked to wear kimonos to ceremonies and to pose for photographs dressed in their garb. Often, the Japanese women were the only representatives wearing ethnic "costumes." By making such requests, Ogawa contends that WCTU leaders, such as American WCTU President Anna A. Gordon, depoliticized their Japanese counterparts, commodifying and objectifying them for Western consumption. To reformers such as Kubushiro Ochimi, leader of the Japanese WCTU, the kimono was unflatteringly equated with the geisha girl, a stereotypically submissive entertainer purchased for use by men.

In its campaign against the wearing of the kimono, the Japanese Union successfully varied the discourse heard among the different nations residing under the World WCTU umbrella. But the Japanese Union created racial hierarchies of its own, and in this respect it mirrored the practical considerations of realpolitik created and endorsed by imperialists, according to Ogawa. Kubushiro Ochimi, for example, placed her own country at the top of the hierarchy of Asian nations, including China. She interpreted Japan-China relations as involving a shared ethnic and intellectual past, but she regarded Japan as an "elder brother" to its younger brother China, legitimizing Japan's military aggression against its neighbor as an expression of an elder brother's responsibility to guide his younger sibling toward enlightenment and civilization.

Manako Ogawa's work adds a significant counterweight to recent scholarship on women's transnational organizations. Jo Vellacott, Glenda Sluga, Carol Miller, and others, have explored the relationship between transnational women activists in organizations such as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and post-World War I international politics.

[1] These scholars have emphasized the degree to which women, as a historically disenfranchised group, sought an avenue to self-determination through international bodies such as the League of Nations. In their efforts, they acted largely in unison. Ogawa demonstrates that at times, the World WCTU also acted in concert, particularly when it responded to an international body of male policy makers. She points to the 1930 London Naval Conference, where, led by the Japanese Union, the WCTU stormed St. James's Palace uninvited, and presented emissaries with a petition to curb the arms race. WILPF members from diverse nations presented a petition of their own to the all-male delegates meeting at the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 (they, too, were uninvited). Yet Annika Wilmers's work on the WILPF has demonstrated that nationalism in the early twentieth century kept WILPF's membership more often divided than united.

[2] Manako Ogawa's article underscores the ways in which both the U.S. and Japanese branches of the WCTU acted within the ideological structures of imperialist policies and racial hierarchies that were consistent with the geopolitics of the world in which they operated. Those frameworks frequently kept the WCTU from achieving its goal of binding the world's women together under the banner of the white ribbon.

[1] Jo Vellacott, "A Place for Pacifism and Trans-nationalism in Feminist Theory: The Early Work of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom," Women's History Review, 2 (1993): 23-56; Glenda Sluga, "Female and National Self-Determination: A Gender Re-Reading of 'The Apogee of Nationalism'" Nations and Nationalism, 6 (2000): 495-521; Carol Miller, "Geneva—the Key to Equality": Inter-war feminists and the League of Nations," Women History Review, 3 (1994): 219-245.

[2] Annika Wilmers, "Zwischen Den Fronten: Friedensdiskurse in der Internationalen Frauenfriedensbewegung, 1914-1919" in Davy, J.A., Hagemann, K. and Kätzel, U. (eds) Frieden—Gewalt—Geschlecht: Friedens- und Konflictforschung als Geschlechterforschung (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2005).

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Commodity chains (book review)

For those interested in commodity chains for coffee, cocaine, and other drugs, Sharon Cohen has a review in World History Connected, Feb. 2007, of Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal and Zephyr Frank, eds., From Silver to Cocaine, Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). For more, see here.

Brandt's Cigarette Century (review)

Bryan Burrough, Washington Post, 18 March 2007, reviews Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America. For more, see here.

Hamill reviews Dry Manhattan (review)

Pete Hamill reviews Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Harvard UP) for the New York Times, 11 March 2007. For more, see here.

Hamm on Burns, Spirits of America (review)

Richard F. Hamm, review of Eric Burns, Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol, in JAMAL: Journal of the American Medical Association 291/20 (May 26, 2006): 2493-2494.

Berridge reviewing Gutzke on improved public house (review)

Virginia Berridge, review of David W. Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives: Reinventing the Public House in England, 1896-1960, in Addiction 101/9 (September 2006): 1367-1368.

Review of A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth Century England

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (February 2007)

Adam Smyth, ed. _A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in
Seventeenth-Century England_. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004. xxv + 214
pp. Illustrations, index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-84384-009-X.

Reviewed for H-Albion by David Clemis, Department of History and
Classics, University of Alberta

Drink, Identity, and Ambivalence

This engaging collection of essays represents an important new strand
in the study of early modern English drug and alcohol history. The
largely literary studies gathered together in _A Pleasing Sinne_
focus neither upon state regulation nor the evidence of the social or
public order effects of the production and distribution of alcohol.
Instead, they take a more cultural turn in their efforts to elucidate
key values, attitudes, and beliefs that are apparent in various
seventeenth-century English texts concerned, in one way or another,
with alcohol consumption.

As Adam Smyth observes in his introduction to this collection, "the
great wealth of texts that reflected and shaped seventeenth-century
culture contested the moral, social and political significances of
alcohol" (p. xiv). A key theme that runs through most of these essays
is what Smyth calls "a larger cultural ambivalence about alcohol that
is, to this day, unresolved" (p. xiv). For seventeenth-century
writers, this ambivalence was fostered by broadly inconsistent
conceptions of drinking. On one hand, drink promoted conviviality,
bonds of friendship, loyalty, and artistic creativity (so it was said
of wine), and it was strengthening and refreshing (especially English
ale). But the evils of drink were also seen in its promotion of sin
and arrogance, as well as the destruction of reason and dulling of
the wits (so said royalists of ale-swilling commonwealthmen).
Drinking was also thought to undermine the natural social order and,
for some, the drinking of claret was simply unpatriotic.

For the contributors to this volume, this ambivalence, or at least
the strong contests between understandings of the nature and effects
of alcohol (or different types of alcohol), often turns on the place
of drinking in the assertion of one or more forms of identity. Thus,
we find essays about drinking and political association, gender,
national stereotyping, and social rank.

Throughout the mid-seventeenth century, writers of popular broadsides
and aristocratic poets made strong connections between particular
drinking practices and political affiliation. As Angela McShane Jones
observes in her impressive essay: "From 1649 ... broadside balladeers
took a political stance on drink and drinking. They politicised drink
and then drunkenness, personified radical political leaders in terms
of drink and drunkenness and, in so doing, depicted the social and
cultural landscape in which 'political drinking' took place" (p.
72). In her study of the writing of royalist exiles, Marika Keblusek
shows the strength of the association between a particular drinking
culture and a political identity. Drinking healths or toasting with
their trademark cups of wine can be seen as epitomizing royalist
exiles making defiant, if symbolic, resistance to the much mocked
parliamentarians surreptitiously sipping their ale. But Keblusek
suggests that perhaps the greater significance of royalist drinking
was as a means of finding comfort and solidarity in difficult times.
McShane Jones shows how, from the 1670s, broadsides politicized
drunkenness with claims of excessive Tory binging and hypocritical,
secretive Whig tippling. This would only abate when the great
seventeenth-century political crises passed. McShane Jones describes
a new image that appears after 1688: that of William III drinking
beer with common folk. As he tried to rule with Whig and Tory, so his
willingness to mix drinks diminished the significance of wine and
beer as political markers.

Charles Luddington's article suggests that the political significance
of drink remained after 1689, but it assumed different forms. He
charts how, between 1680 and 1703, the strategically motivated trade
policies of the parties resulted in the association of French claret
with the Tories and Portuguese port with the Whigs. Luddington is
quick to point out that this division was purely one of political
symbolism--it was no reflection of the fine palates of Earl of
Shaftesbury and his followers. The Whig policy might have driven up
the price of claret for political reasons, but it did not stop rich
Whigs from stocking their personal cellars with great quantities of
superior French wine. Indeed, Luddington argues, perhaps the more
important signification made by the claret/port divide was between
the wealthy who could afford costly French claret and the middling
sorts forced to resort to port on account of Whig trade policies.

Other contributors to this volume consider the place of drink in the
inscription of social identity. In their essay on medical
understandings of wine and beer, Louise Hill Curth and Tanya Cassidy
note one seventeenth-century text in which various social groups are
assigned their appropriate form of alcohol: "wine is for wits and
scholars (improving mental health), beer is for the urban bourgeois
(imparting a diet of strength and solidity), and ale is for the
countryman (as an early morning pick-me-up)" (p. 144). In "Drinking
Cider in Paradise: Science, Improvement, and the Politics of Fruit,"
Vittoria Di Palma observes that, like ale, the marketing of cider
suffered from the product's "local and rural connotations" which
"needed to be combated before the drink could become prized by the
nation's gentry" (p. 175).

Cedric Brown's comparative study of two seventeenth-century poets,
Robert Herrick and Leonard Wheatcroft, is a fascinating account of
the possibilities for the assertion of social identity "through the
meanings of drink in the cultural practices of the period" (p. 17).
Herrick, a royalist "gentleman priest" and notable author of
_Hesperides_ (1648), and Wheatcroft, "a yeoman or artisan church
clerk," both wrote poems celebrating the social bonding engendered by
alcohol on festive occasions. Nonetheless, Brown observes, their
respective social identities inevitably produced different
perspectives. Herrick's view is thick "with affections of
superiority.... Only wine supports the Muse.... Both poetry and wine
are signs of an exclusive society, and the Sons of Beer can have no
pretensions to refined understanding" (p. 7). For Wheatcroft, Brown
suggests, "it was often the companionship of ale or beer that led to
the occasions, even sometimes gave inspiration, for verse" (p. 18).
Where Wheatcroft remarks upon the social inclusivity of festive
drinking, Herrick emphasizes its reinforcement of social order.

Stella Achilleos considers how the _Anacreontea_--a collection of
short Greek lyrics devoted to love and wine--was reappropriated by
young elite men of the early seventeenth century and informed the
literary expressions of their exclusive and sophisticated
conviviality. The sociability of the upper ranks is also the subject
of Michelle O'Callahan's essay on London tavern culture. A picture,
familiar to scholars of the early modern tavern on the continent,
emerges here of flourishing early seventeenth-century London tavern
societies that were sites of conviviality, wit, and common interest.[1]

While male sociability features prominently in this volume, the
themes of drinking, identity, and ambivalence are also richly
explored in several contributions concerned with women and drink.
Karen Britland incisively examines gender roles and identities in
early seventeenth-century dramas through the lenses of drink and
hospitality. In "empirical," property-oriented, and virile Rome, male
drinking supported conviviality and fellowship that affirmed men's
identity and authority. In decadent, feminized Egypt under Cleopatra,
wine led to delusion and decadence. In John Marston's _The Wonder of
Women, or the Tragedie of Sophonisba_ (1606), Britland finds that
there is "an equation to be made between strong wine's potency and a
woman such as Sophonisba who has the capacity, even against her own
will, to undermine a man's reason" (p. 123). In these early
seventeenth-century dramas, Britland sees that when dispensed and
partaken by men, drink leads to conviviality and solidarity. Yet when
women are associated with drink, masculinity and the social order are
undermined.

Susan Owen's examination of the libertine figure in two Restoration
comedies uncovers different ambiguities relating to drink and gender.
Owen notes that women, like men, drink in William Wycherley's _The
Country Wife_ (1675), and are not taken advantage of as a consequence
of their drinking. Moreover, Owen holds that "drink is the agent of
women's emancipation and self-expression" (p. 139). It is through
drink that they are able to escape the power of men and, indeed, turn
the tables on men like the character Mr. Horner, who become their
creatures. Owen acknowledges the "ironic social reflexiveness of the
play," suggesting the importance of the power of drink to create the
remarkable social relations found within the world of the play. It is
interesting that, as Britland sees pre-Civil War dramas that present
the mysterious, analogous powers of women and drink that threaten the
masculine power and the social order, so Owen finds in Restoration
comedies the amazing transformative power of alcohol that helps
create a comic world which mocks society's gender relations.

Several essays explore the relationship between drink, or its
production, and national identity. Vittoria Di Palma found that
seventeenth-century writers extoling the virtues of cider played the
familiar nationalistic card. The cultivation of apples and pears was
seen as having benefits for the poor, was good for the general
economy, and promoted the general virtues of Englishness. Charotte
McBride notes that nationalistic perspectives related to alcohol
engage not only patriotic sentiments and economic interests in the
production of ale or beer, but also the notion of a people's
inclination to drunkenness. McBride joins others in noting that, from
the early seventeenth century, excessive English drinking was a great
concern amongst puritans.[2]

While most of these essays look at drink in relation to one or more
types of group identity, some consider it broader social contexts.
Curth and Cassidy note that the wide availability of alcohol and the
great number of texts endorsing its medicinal properties facilitated
a "broadening access to the science of healthcare" thus enabling
"more people than ever before to manage their liquid diet in an
empoweringly responsible way" (p. 159). Curth and Cassidy make an
important observation about the anachronistic imposition of recent
medical and psychological categories upon early modern texts. They
observe that "terms such as 'medicine', 'intoxicant' and 'social
lubricant' lose something of their clarity in the context of a
holistic 'humours'-based medical philosophy. Given that the mind and
the body act on one another, the distinctions between 'life
preserving', 'life affirming' and 'cheering' are hard to define" (p.
159).

Adam Smyth concludes the volume with a fascinating essay on
conceptions of drunkenness in cheap, printed, popular works. The
tensions Smyth identifies in these works reflects the broader
ambivalence about drinking that appears to be evident across English
culture in the seventeenth century. Of the texts condemning drink, he
notes that "running through all of these discussions of the
destructive potential of drink is, paradoxically, an emphasis on the
seductive qualities of alcohol" (p. 201). Moralists, says Smyth, face
the delicate task of describing the tempting appeal of drink without
appearing to celebrate it.

Smyth finds another, different kind of tension in a text that
unashamedly defends the practice of hearty drinking. In response to
moralists' charges that drinking dulls the mind and undermines social
hierarchy, John Cotsgrave's _Wits Interpreter_ (1655, 1662, 1671),
tries to show how the properly conducted drinking rituals of elite
societies emphasize the use of wit and reason, and reinforce social
hierarchy. Yet, as Smyth argues, in defending drinking to the public
by reference to exclusive drinking rituals, _Wits Interpreter_
encourages the adoption of those rituals by the public. Thus, the
text "is celebrating a culture of restricted access and hierarchies
by flinging open the doors to preserve it" (p. 209).

The ambiguities or ambivalence that the contributors to _A Pleasing
Sinne_ find about drinking in seventeenth-century texts is
complicated by a further consideration. These can be challenging
texts for cultural historians to interpret. As O'Callaghan notes wit,
humor, and merry-making were essential aspects of drinking culture:
taverns "were as much places for convivial pleasures as rational
deliberation" (p. 51). Grasping the particular wit, irony, and satire
in these sorts of works can be a challenge for historians wishing to
make inferences about widely held attitudes and beliefs. Reflecting
on the libertine in Restoration comedy, Susan Owen acknowledges the
debate amongst critics as to "how 'sexy' sex comedy is: how far does
it promote or endorse the rakes' libertine values and how far does it
anatomise them or hold them up to critical scrutiny or satire" (p.
127). The same might be said of drinking and drunkenness in the
seventeenth-century literature. Citing Charles Cotton's _The Compleat
Gamester_ (1674), Smyth notes the disingenuous and "comically
unconvincing" efforts of Cotton to deny that he is a gamester.
O'Callaghan notes that the wit of tavern societies employed "in-
jokes, formulae, codes, and rituals" which were only recognized by
members (p. 50). This makes it difficult to know how closely we may
infer social conventions as they were practiced from a text like
Richard Brathwaite's _Law of Drinking_ (1617). This is, after all, a
text rich in satire and mockery as is evident in its account of the
etiquette of drunken vomiting with its distinct requirements when one
"casts up" in the presence of only men and or mixed company.[3]

Perhaps as more studies of the place of alcohol in English literature
and culture are produced, we will develop a better sense of the tone
and temper of these kinds of works. The essays in _Pleasing Sinne_,
of necessity, analyze a relatively small number of texts. This, of
course, inevitably imposes limits on the wider conclusions that can
be drawn about drinking in early modern English society. Nonetheless,
this volume raises important, new questions and constructs some key
themes that point the way for future research. Moreover, these essays
make clear the particular qualities of drug and alcohol history that
make it so fruitful for those interested in early modern societies
and cultures.

Notes

[1]. Beat Kumin and B. Ann Tlusty, eds., _The World of the Tavern_
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); and Ann Tlusty, _Bacchus and the Civic
Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany_
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001). See also,
Peter Clark, _The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200-1830_
(London: Longman, 1983).

[2]. The work of Judith Bennett and Peter Clark on the social
functions and transformation of drinking, as well as the authorities
anxieties about ale houses are endorsed here. See: Clark, _The
English Alehouse_; and Judith M. Bennett, _Ale, Beer and Brewsters in
England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600_ (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996).

[3]. Blasius Multibibus [Richard Brathwaite], _A Solemne joviall
disputation, theoreticke and practicke; briefely shadowing the Law of
Drinking..._ (London, 1617), pp. 40-41.

Copyright (c) 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list,
and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.

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Bailey review of Gutzke, Pubs and Progressives (review)

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Storytelling in Alcoholics Anonymous (review)

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Smith's Caribbean Rum (review)

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Koot's review of Smith's Caribbean Rum (book review)

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Conservative review of Timothy Leary's biography (review)

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Parsons and Campbell on Tracy and Acker's history of alcohol and drug use in the USA (reviews)

Elaine Frantz Parsons's review of Sarah W. Tracy and Caroline Jean Acker, Altering American Consciousness: The History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800-2000 (2004) in
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Portuguese-Brazilian alcohol trade in Africa (book review)

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Griffiths on Pubs & Progressives in England (book review)

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Ogle's American beer (book review)

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