Dave Hazzan

In 1978, Mark Abley and his friend Clare took a break from their studies at Oxford to embark on a journey through Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Clare looked forward to the splendid art and architecture, and Abley wanted to learn something about himself and his generation’s purpose in life. Might he even fill the “God-shaped emptiness” he felt growing inside…

According to an apocryphal story, the teetotaller George Brown once verbally attacked his opponent John A. Macdonald, an alcoholic, while at a campaign stop. Following Brown’s speech, the future prime minister raised himself from his seat, turned around, and threw up. Wiping his mouth afterward, he declared, “Forgive me, but I always do that when I hear George Brown speak.” Dan Malleck’s Liquor and the Liberal State is replete with similar accounts of activists and politicians hurling insults at one another throughout nineteenth-century…