Download or read book Last Call written by Daniel Okrent and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Smashing the Liquor Machine written by Mark Lawrence Schrad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the history of temperance and prohibition as you've never read it before: redefining temperance as a progressive, global, pro-justice movement that affected virtually every significant world leader from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. When most people think of the prohibition era, they think of speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink. In other words, in the popular imagination, it is a peculiarly American history. Yet, as Mark Lawrence Schrad shows in Smashing the Liquor Machine, the conventional scholarship on prohibition is extremely misleading for a simple reason: American prohibition was just one piece of a global phenomenon. Schrad's pathbreaking history of prohibition looks at the anti-alcohol movement around the globe through the experiences of pro-temperance leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Leo Tolstoy, Thomás Masaryk, Kemal Atatürk, Mahatma Gandhi, and anti-colonial activists across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Schrad argues that temperance wasn't "American exceptionalism" at all, but rather one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. In fact, Schrad offers a fundamental re-appraisal of this colorful era to reveal that temperance forces frequently aligned with progressivism, social justice, liberal self-determination, democratic socialism, labor rights, women's rights, and indigenous rights. Placing the temperance movement in a deep global context, forces us to fundamentally rethink its role in opposing colonial exploitation throughout American history as well. Prohibitionism united Native American chiefs like Little Turtle and Black Hawk; African-American leaders Frederick Douglass, Ida Wells, and Booker T. Washington; suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Frances Willard; progressives from William Lloyd Garrison to William Jennings Bryan; writers F.E.W. Harper and Upton Sinclair, and even American presidents from Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Progressives rather than puritans, the global temperance movement advocated communal self-protection against the corrupt and predatory "liquor machine" that had become exceedingly rich off the misery and addictions of the poor around the world, from the slums of South Asia to the beerhalls of Central Europe to the Native American reservations of the United States. Unlike many traditional "dry" histories, Smashing the Liquor Machine gives voice to minority and subaltern figures who resisted the global liquor industry, and further highlights that the impulses that led to the temperance movement were far more progressive and variegated than American readers have been led to believe.
Download or read book Jews and Booze written by Marni Davis and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the relationship between alcohol and the Jewish community throughout the nineteenth century and the period of Prohibition, describing the role of Jews in the liquor industry and the relationship between the anti-alcohol movement and anti-Semitism.
Download or read book Alcohol and Public Policy written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1981-02-01 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Smugglers Bootleggers and Scofflaws written by Ellen NicKenzie Lawson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses previously unstudied Coast Guard records for New York City and environs to examine the development of Rum Row and smuggling in New York City during Prohibition. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, drying up New York City promised to be the greatest triumph of the proponents of Prohibition. Instead, the city remained the nations greatest liquor market. Smugglers, Bootleggers, and Scofflaws focuses on liquor smuggling to tell the story of Prohibition in New York City. Using previously unstudied Coast Guard records from 1920 to 1933 for New York City and environs, Ellen NicKenzie Lawson examines the development of Rum Row and smuggling via the coasts of Long Island, the Long Island Sound, the Jersey shore, and along the Hudson and East Rivers. Lawson demonstrates how smuggling syndicates on the Lower East Side, the West Side, and Little Italy contributed to the emergence of the Broadway Mob. She also explores New York Citys scofflaw populationpatrons of thirty thousand speakeasies and five hundred nightclubsas well as how politicians Fiorello La Guardia, James Jimmy Walker, Nicholas Murray Butler, Pauline Morton Sabin, and Al Smith articulated their views on Prohibition to the nation. Lawson argues that in their assertion of the freedom to drink alcohol for enjoyment, New Yorks smugglers, bootleggers, and scofflaws belong in the American tradition of defending liberty. The result was the historically unprecedented step of repeal of a constitutional amendment with passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.
Download or read book Prohibition in Kansas written by Robert Smith Bader and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prohibition Wine written by Marian Leah Knapp and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1918, Rebecca Goldberg—a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire living in rural Wilmington, Massachusetts—lost her husband, Nathan, to a railroad accident, a tragedy that left her alone with six children to raise. To support the family after Nathan’s death, Rebecca continued work she’d done for years: keeping chickens. Once or twice a week, with a suitcase full of fresh eggs in one hand and a child in the other, she delivered her product to relatives and friends in and around Boston. Then, in 1920—right at the start of Prohibition—one of Rebecca’s customers suggested that she start selling alcoholic beverages in addition to her eggs to add to her meagre income. He would provide his homemade raw alcohol; Rebecca would turn it into something drinkable and sell it to new customers in Wilmington. Desperate to feed her family and keep them together, and determined to make sure her kids would all graduate from high school, Rebecca agreed—making herself a wary participant in the illegal alcohol trade. Rebecca’s business grew slowly and surreptitiously until 1925, when she was caught and summoned to appear before a judge. Fortunately for her, the chief of police was one of her customers, and when he spoke highly of her character before the court, all charges were dropped. Her case made headline news—and she made history.
Download or read book Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause written by Joe Coker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2007-12-14 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1800s, Southern evangelicals believed contemporary troubles—everything from poverty to political corruption to violence between African Americans and whites—sprang from the bottles of “demon rum” regularly consumed in the South. Though temperance quickly gained support in the antebellum North, Southerners cast a skeptical eye on the movement, because of its ties with antislavery efforts. Postwar evangelicals quickly realized they had to make temperance appealing to the South by transforming the Yankee moral reform movement into something compatible with southern values and culture. In Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, Joe L. Coker examines the tactics and results of temperance reformers between 1880 and 1915. Though their denominations traditionally forbade the preaching of politics from the pulpit, an outgrowth of evangelical fervor led ministers and their congregations to sound the call for prohibition. Determined to save the South from the evils of alcohol, they played on southern cultural attitudes about politics, race, women, and honor to communicate their message. The evangelicals were successful in their approach, negotiating such political obstacles as public disapproval the church’s role in politics and vehement opposition to prohibition voiced by Jefferson Davis. The evangelical community successfully convinced the public that cheap liquor in the hands of African American “beasts” and drunkard husbands posed a serious threat to white women. Eventually, the code of honor that depended upon alcohol-centered hospitality and camaraderie was redefined to favor those who lived as Christians and supported the prohibition movement. Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause is the first comprehensive survey of temperance in the South. By tailoring the prohibition message to the unique context of the American South, southern evangelicals transformed the region into a hotbed of temperance activity, leading the national prohibition movement.
Download or read book Deliver Us from Evil written by Norman H. Clark and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The 1920s from Prohibition to Charles Lindbergh written by Stephen Feinstein and published by Enslow Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of the 1920s, including the fads, triumphs, tragedies, and fashions of that decade.
Download or read book The War on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State written by Lisa McGirr and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[This] fine history of Prohibition . . . could have a major impact on how we read American political history.”—James A. Morone, New York Times Book Review Prohibition has long been portrayed as a “noble experiment” that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers, and speakeasies. Now at last Lisa McGirr dismantles this cherished myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government, the genesis of our contemporary penal state. Her deeply researched, eye-opening account uncovers patterns of enforcement still familiar today: the war on alcohol was waged disproportionately in African American, immigrant, and poor white communities. Alongside Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws, Prohibition brought coercion into everyday life and even into private homes. Its targets coalesced into an electoral base of urban, working-class voters that propelled FDR to the White House. This outstanding history also reveals a new genome for the activist American state, one that shows the DNA of the right as well as the left. It was Herbert Hoover who built the extensive penal apparatus used by the federal government to combat the crime spawned by Prohibition. The subsequent federal wars on crime, on drugs, and on terror all display the inheritances of the war on alcohol. McGirr shows the powerful American state to be a bipartisan creation, a legacy not only of the New Deal and the Great Society but also of Prohibition and its progeny. The War on Alcohol is history at its best—original, authoritative, and illuminating of our past and its continuing presence today.
Download or read book Prohibition and Politics written by Robert Arthur Hohner and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1920s and early 1930s "Bishop Cannon" became a household word in much of America. Methodist bishop James Cannon, Jr., was probably the most influential southern churchman between the Civil War and World War II and certainly the most controversial. A paradoxical figure, he seemed as comfortable in the secular world of business and public affairs as in the church, and critics condemned him as an exemplar of the materialistic values of the 1920s. Plunging into politics in Virginia and the nation to secure and protect prohibition, he dramatically broke the southern taboo against preachers in politics.
Download or read book Prohibition written by Edward Behr and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the Prohibition era in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933; and traces the rise of the Temperance movement, speakeasies, and gangsters including Pretty Boy Floyd, Lucky Luciano, and Al Capone.
Download or read book When the Rivers Ran Red written by Vivienne Sosnowski and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, millions of people around the world enjoy California's legendary wines, unaware that 90 years ago the families who made these wines--and in many cases still do – turned to struggle and subterfuge to save the industry we now cherish. When Prohibition took effect in 1919, three months after one of the greatest California grape harvests of all time, violence and chaos descended on Northern California. Federal agents spilled thousands of gallons of wine in the rivers and creeks, gun battles erupted on dark country roads, and local law enforcement officers, sympathetic to their winemaking neighbors, found ways to run circles around the intruding authorities. For the state's winemaking families--many of them immigrants from Italy--surviving Prohibition meant facing impossible decisions, whether to give up the idyllic way of life their families had known for generations, or break the law to enable their wine businesses and their livelihood to survive. Including moments of both desperation and joy, Sosnowski tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people fought to protect to a beautiful and timeless culture in the lovely hills and valleys of now-celebrated wine country.
Download or read book Alcohol in America written by United States Department of Transportation and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1985-02-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alcohol is a killerâ€"1 of every 13 deaths in the United States is alcohol-related. In addition, 5 percent of the population consumes 50 percent of the alcohol. The authors take a close look at the problem in a "classy little study," as The Washington Post called this book. The Library Journal states, "...[T]his is one book that addresses solutions....And it's enjoyably readable....This is an excellent review for anyone in the alcoholism prevention business, and good background reading for the interested layperson." The Washington Post agrees: the book "...likely will wind up on the bookshelves of counselors, politicians, judges, medical professionals, and law enforcement officials throughout the country."
Download or read book When Night Never Ends written by Drac Von Stoller and published by Drac Von Stoller. This book was released on 2024-08-20 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall had cast its chilly grip over the woods, a foreboding silence settling over the landscape as five teenagers drove down the winding road. Excitement thrummed in the air with each mile they closed in on their secluded cabin, but an undercurrent of unease rippled beneath their laughter. The year was 1980, and with Halloween only a few days away, they had planned this getaway—an escape from their everyday lives full of responsibilities, homework, and the looming threat of adulthood. As their car wound through the increasingly dense forest, the teens were oblivious to the watchful eyes that followed their progress from the shadows between the trees. Twisted shapes slithered just out of sight, their forms barely distinguishable from the gnarled branches that clawed at the darkening sky. They were armed not only with snacks and a few bottles of cheap beer but also a VHS tape of what they believed to be the scariest movie of all time: *Horrifying Tales From The Dead*. The tape sat innocuously in Jason's backpack, its presence a constant reminder of the thrills that awaited them. Little did they know that the real horror would far surpass anything captured on that magnetic strip. "Almost there! Can you believe we actually did this?" Jason shouted, bouncing in the back seat as the headlights flickered over treetops. His enthusiasm was infectious, but Jamie, sitting beside him, couldn't shake the feeling that something was...off. The trees seemed to lean in closer with each passing moment, their branches reaching out like grasping fingers. "I still can't believe my parents let me come," Rachel admitted, her laughter more playful than nervous. "They said 'sure just don't burn it down.'" As she spoke, a chill ran down her spine, causing her to shiver involuntarily. She chalked it up to excitement, unaware of the malevolent forces already closing in around them. "Just don't do anything stupid like last year's party," Mia chimed in, rolling her eyes dramatically. The memory of that night flashed through her mind—the acrid smell of smoke, the panicked screams, the feeling of suffocation. She pushed the thoughts away, focusing on the adventure ahead. "Hey, that wasn't my fault! The fire extinguisher was empty!" Rachel laughed, but her words seemed to hang in the air, echoing strangely in the confines of the car. For a moment, the laughter died, replaced by an uncomfortable silence as each of them contemplated what might have happened if things had gone differently that night. As the car pulled up to the cabin, its weathered wood screamed of secrets untold and a thousand ghost stories spent in whispered tones. The structure loomed before them, a dark silhouette against the twilight sky. Windows- like hollow eyes stared down at them, and for a split second, Ben could have sworn he saw movement behind one of the curtains. They stepped out into the cool, crisp air, the crunch of dead leaves beneath their feet sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the forest. As they gathered their belongings, a distant howl echoed through the trees, causing them all to freeze momentarily. "Just a wolf," Jason said with a nervous chuckle, but the tension in his voice betrayed his unease. "Nothing to worry about." They made their way into the cabin, the old floorboards creaking ominously beneath their weight. Dust motes danced in the beams of their flashlights, giving the air a thick, oppressive quality. The smell of mold and decay assaulted their nostrils, a stark reminder of the cabin's long abandonment. As they settled in, Ben began setting up the old television that had been blessed with a dusty VHS player. The ancient appliance hummed to life with a sound not unlike a death rattle, its screen flickering with static that seemed to form fleeting, nightmarish shapes. "Alright, who's ready for some scares?" Ben grinned, rubbing his hands together. But even as he spoke, a sense of foreboding settled over him like a shroud. "Me! But keep the lights on. I hate jump scares," Mia said, suddenly wary. She glanced around the room, her eyes lingering on the dark corners where the lamplight didn't quite reach. Was it her imagination, or were the shadows moving? "Too late! It's Halloween; it's time to get terrified!" Jason barked with enthusiasm as he slid the tape into the player. The machine accepted it with a mechanical groan that sounded almost pained. As the movie started, the cabin filled with the flickering light from the screen, dancing shadows stretching ominously across the walls. Their laughter quickly evaporated as Count Drac Von Stoller appeared, his long face twisting into a ghastly grin. Dressed in a tattered cape and a mockery of elegance, he seemed to breathe life into the very air around him.
Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
