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The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Scribner
June 2011
On Sale: May 31, 2011
480 pages
ISBN: 074327704X
EAN: 9780743277044
Paperback
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Non-Fiction
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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