"The Liquid Madness – When gin threatened to wipe out the population of London" explores the "Gin Craze" of the early 1700s, the first drug epidemic in modern history. Before this era, Englishmen drank beer; suddenly, cheap, potent gin flooded the streets. The spirit was often distilled with turpentine and sulphuric acid, leading to blindness and madness. Social historian Beatrice Miles describes a city in collapse. Death rates exceeded birth rates as "Mother's Ruin" gripped the working class. The book analyzes the famous print "Gin Lane" by William Hogarth and the government's desperate attempts to tax the vice out of existence, which led to riots and a black market that makes the modern drug war look tame. "The Liquid Madness" is a terrifying look at societal addiction. It shows how a deregulation of alcohol production nearly destroyed the capital of the British Empire and how society struggled to distinguish between moral failing and public health crisis.