David Koehler continues his history of German peasants with this brilliant second volume, the companion to Bakers, Brewers and Bricklayers (2022), which was nominated for a Midwest Book Award. Paupers, Parties and Plagues , written in a vivid non-academic style, shows how this hardy people survived waves of war, plague and famine yet managed to invent the first printing press, oil lamps, iron stoves, the pivoting front cart axle, cuckoo clocks and stagecoaches between 1450 and the mid-nineteenth century. Koehler explains why the Industrial Revolution arrived late in German-speaking lands, and shows how the revolution of 1848, known as the “turning point when Germany did not turn,” left Germans at a poverty equal to today’s Sub-Saharan Africa. The religious upheaval of the Thirty Year’s War played out mostly on German soil, leaving the German-speaking world destitute and divided, which eventually leads to a mass exodus, beginning in 1820, when millions escaped poverty and despotism for freedom and food in the Americas. Born into a German American community in Des Plaines, Illinois, where his great-grandfather established the town's first hotel, David Koehler went on to earn a BA in Philosophy and History from Illinois and a BD from Yale. Now, retired from corporate employment, he writes history. His first book, Bakers, Brewers and Bricklayers: The History of Everyday German Peasants Vol. 1, 100 BCE-1450 was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife.