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The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Scribner
May 2010
On Sale: May 11, 2010
468 pages
ISBN: 0743277023
EAN: 9780743277020
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of
America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when
the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of
America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.
From its start, America has been awash in drink. The
sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of
the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the
1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than
tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their
booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling
explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition
was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of
government interference in the private lives of Americans
changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals
how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the
growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement,
which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear
of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were
losing control of their country to the immigrants of the
large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War
I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from
the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to
remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and
convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite
intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of
an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday,
William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre
S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the
incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker
Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most
powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of
all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary,
and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the
country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan
speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed
forever; California vineyards busily
producing “sacramental” wine; New England fishing
communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-
running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress
itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition
drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told.
It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever
written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major
American writer.
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