Review by Choice Review
The infamous gangster Al Capone, the barely legitimate liquor businessman Sam Bronfman, the zealous anti-alcohol crusader Wayne Wheeler, the persistent assistant attorney general Mabel Willebrandt, and numerous other major and minor characters of the US Prohibition drama appear in this book. From an examination of efforts of groups like the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union to outlaw the making and selling of alcohol, to a discussion of urban and immigrant resistance to and flouting of Prohibition laws, to an extensive look at the counter-push by groups like the Association against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, Okrent's book hits on the most significant Prohibition-related topics. An excellent must read for anyone interested in the history of the US's failed Noble Experiment. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. J. M. Richards Gordon College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
ON Jan. 17, 1920, America went dry. The 18th Amendment had been ratified a year earlier, banning "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" within the United States and its territories. Thus began the era of Prohibition, a nearly 14-year orgy of lawbreaking unparalleled in our history. The 18th Amendment was a rarity in that it limited the rights of the individual rather than the activities of the government, thereby guaranteeing a hostile reception. As such, it holds the distinction of being the only constitutional amendment ever to be repealed. Which leads one to ask: How did this happen in the first place? Why would Americans curtail their precious right to drink? "Last Call," by Daniel Okrent, provides the sobering answers. Okrent, the author of four previous books and the first public editor of The New York Times, views Prohibition as one skirmish in a larger war waged by small-town white Protestants who felt besieged by the forces of change then sweeping their nation - a theory first proposed by the historian Richard Hofstadter more than five decades ago. Though much has been written about Prohibition since then, Okrent offers a remarkably original account, showing how its proponents combined the nativist fears of many Americans with legitimate concerns about the evils of alcohol to mold a movement powerful enough to amend the United States Constitution. It wasn't easy. Americans have always been a hard-drinking, freedom-loving lot. George Washington had a still on his farm. James Madison downed a pint of whiskey a day, a common practice at a time when liquor was safer than water and cheaper than tea. But alcohol consumption rose dramatically in the 19th century, as new immigrants flooded American cities. Before long, beer had become king. In 1850, Okrent says, "Americans drank 36 million gallons of the stuff; by 1890 annual consumption had exploded to 855 million gallons." According to census data, a vast majority of the nation's 300,000 saloons were owned by first-generation Americans, most of whom were financed by the breweries. Okrent skillfully tells this story through the eyes of Adolphus Busch, the German immigrant who revolutionized the nation's drinking habits. By vertically integrating his operation (brewing, pasteurizing, bottling, transporting, advertising), Busch quickly placed his product, "a light lager named for the Bohemian town of Budweis," in taverns nationwide. Detroit, the day before Prohibition. There have been many studies that follow the rapid growth of the temperance movement in this era - the colorful saloon-busting of Carry Nation, the tentrevival magnetism of Billy Sunday - but none can match the precision of Okrent's account. Momentum, he notes, depended on both a keen understanding of the political process and a ruthless approach to elected officials, who either joined the cause or found themselves under endless assault. Knowing that alcohol taxes accounted for about one-third of all federal revenue, temperance leaders campaigned successfully for a federal income tax to make up the difference. Believing that women were more likely than men to support restrictions on alcohol, these leaders strongly supported women's suffrage. And when America entered World War I in 1917, they helped fan the flames of antiGerman hysteria by accusing the Busch family and other brewers of harboring sympathies for the kaiser (a charge, not entirely untrue, that turned beer drinking into a disloyal act). Okrent's description of the Prohibition era is a narrative delight. The Republicans, who controlled the White House and Congress in the '20s, were largely indifferent to its success. Even those who did care were unwilling to spend the king's ransom needed to enforce it. There were never enough agents, and very few of them proved "untouchable." The accompanying laws, meanwhile, provided enough loopholes to guarantee failure. Sacramental wine was permitted, allowing fake clergymen to lead bogus congregants in nonreligious romps. Farmers who fermented their own cider and "fruit juices" were given special exemptions, making them extremely popular neighbors. Doctors, dentists and even veterinarians were free to write prescriptions for remedies like "Richardson's Concentrated Sherry Wine Bitters," which contained 47.5 percent alcohol (95 proof). In the '20s, Charles Walgreen expanded his drugstore chain from 20 stores to an astounding 525 - a spurt ludicrously attributed to his introduction of the milkshake. Much of the illegal liquor had a foul taste, leading to the introduction of mixed drinks with tonic water and ginger ale. And the lure of the speakeasy, with its dance floor and powder room, led to the sexual integration of the all-male drinking culture. "Social life in America," Okrent writes, "was changed forever." What was America's wettest city? Okrent lists a number of contenders - including Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco - but hands the title to Detroit, the corrupt, booming blue-collar metropolis known widely as "the city on a still." At its lawbreaking best in the '20s, Detroit housed more than 20,000 speak-easies, about one for every 30 adults. The local Board of Commerce estimated that the illegal-alcohol business employed 50,000 people, excluding sticky-fingered police officers and politicians; it was the city's second-largest industry, behind automobile manufacturing. Geography also played a role, as Canadian bootleggers, assisted by Detroit's notorious Purple Gang, smuggled alcohol freely across the border in trucks, railroad cars and high-powered speedboats. Huge fortunes were made and multiplied, Okrent says, perhaps the biggest by Sam Bronfman, who bought Joseph E. Seagram & Sons after he had come to dominate "the largescale, cross-border smuggling trade." As the chief Prohibition enforcement officer admitted, "You cannot keep liquor from dripping through a dotted line." By the late '20s, all but the most extreme backers of Prohibition could see how miserably it had failed. Millions of otherwise honest citizens routinely flouted the law. Thousands more were poisoned by cheap homemade brews. Government revenues plummeted, while official corruption ran wild. Ruthless local gangs, led by small-time hoodlums like Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, formed syndicates that modernized criminal activity throughout the United States. YET in some respects the experiment was a success. Prohibition did cut down on drinking and alcoholrelated illnesses. Equally important, its repeal in 1933 did not inspire a prolonged national bender, as many had feared. Indeed, alcohol consumption has actually declined over the years, with Americans drinking less today than they did in the first years of the 20th century. What is missing from Okrent's otherwise splendid account is a sense of which groups were most affected, since it is clear that enforcement varied widely among regions and social classes. We get hints, but little more, that Prohibition worked best when directed at its primary target: the working-class poor. Okrent resists the chance to link Prohibition to the current political scene. But the comparisons are tempting, to say the least. About a century ago, a group of determined activists mobilized to confront the moral decay they claimed was destroying their country. Their public demon was alcohol, but their real enemy was an alien culture reflected by city dwellers, recent immigrants and educated elites. Always a minority, the forces of Prohibition drove the political agenda by concentrating relentlessly on their goal, voting in lockstep on a single issue and threatening politicians who did not sufficiently back their demands. They triumphed because they faced no organized opposition. Americans were too distracted - perhaps too busy drinking - to notice what they had lost. It's a story with an eerily familiar ring. The 18th Amendment was a skirmish in a larger war by small-town white Protestants against the forces of change. David Oshinsky is the Jack S. Blanton professor of history at the University of Texas and the Jacob K. Javits visiting professor at New York University.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 23, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Okrent provides a remarkable breakdown of Prohibition, that uniquely American attempt to banish the sale and consumption of alcohol. In 1919, a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the U.S. was ratified and scheduled to go into effect the following year. Okrent traces the roots of the temperance movement, the suffrage movement, and the anti-immigrant sentiment that added sustained fuel to the cause. He also unravels the complicated politics of the era, providing insight into why the Eighteenth Amendment was pushed through and how it was eventually repealed. After Prohibition went into effect, in 1920, the course of American life and culture was profoundly altered in both large and small ways. Everyone knows about the rise of the gangster era, but what is less well documented are the reactions and the responses of ordinary American citizens. Okrent asks and answers some important questions in this fascinating exploration of a failed social experiment.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Daniel Okrent has proven to be one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the past 25 years, producing books about the history of Rockefeller Center and New England, baseball, and his experience as the first public editor for the New York Times. Now he has taken on a more formidable subject: the origins, implementation, and failure of that great American delusion known as Prohibition. The result may not be as scintillating as the perfect gin gimlet, but it comes mighty close, an assiduously researched, well-written, and continually eye-opening work on what has actually been a neglected subject. There has been, of course, quite a lot of writing that has touched on the 14 years, 1919-1933, when the United States tried to legislate drinking out of existence, but the great bulk of it has been as background to one mobster tale or another. Okrent covers the gangland explosion that Prohibition triggered-and rightly deromanticizes it-but he has a wider agenda that addresses the entire effect enforced temperance had on our social, political, and legal conventions. Above all, Okrent explores the politics of Prohibition; how the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating beverages, was pushed through after one of the most sustained and brilliant pressure-group campaigns in our history; how the fight over booze served as a surrogate for many of the deeper social and ethnic antagonisms dividing the country, and how it all collapsed, almost overnight, essentially nullified by the people. Okrent occasionally stumbles in this story, bogging down here and there in some of the backroom intricacies of the politics, and misconstruing an address by Warren Harding on race as "one of the boldest speeches ever delivered by an American president" (it was more nearly the opposite). But overall he provides a fascinating look at a fantastically complex battle that was fought out over decades-no easy feat. Among other delights, Okrent passes along any number of amusing tidbits about how Americans coped without alcohol, such as sending away for the Vino Sano Grape Brick, a block of dehydrated grape juice, complete with "stems, skins, and pulp" and instructions warning buyers "not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long," lest it become wine. He unearths many sadly forgotten characters from the war over drink-and readers will be surprised to learn how that fight cut across today's ideological lines. Progressives and suffragists made common cause with the Ku Klux Klan-which in turn supported a woman's right to vote-to pass Prohibition. Champions of the people, such as the liberal Democrat Al Smith, fought side-by-side with conservative plutocrats like Pierre du Pont for its repeal. In the end, as Okrent makes clear, Prohibition did make a dent in American drinking-at the cost of hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries from bad bootleg alcohol; the making of organized crime in this country; and a corrosive soaking in hypocrisy. A valuable lesson, for anyone willing to hear it. Kevin Baker is the coauthor, most recently, of Luna Park, a graphic novel published last month by DC Comics. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
While the story of Prohibition (1919-33) is not suspenseful, since we know how this social experiment turned out, Okrent (former public editor, New York Times) helpfully fills in details, explanations, and lessons to be learned while supplementing the familiar story of how legislated temperance did not succeed. He mines archival and published sources and adds memories acquired through interviews and reference to previously unavailable private papers. Okrent emphasizes that the 18th Amendment was a long time coming, passed by the efforts of progressives, populists, nativists, and other morally motivated reformers. Temporarily ending the fifth-largest industry in America, Prohibition transformed the alcoholic beverage business as well as American culture generally. Okrent admits that, although Prohibition promoted criminality and hypocrisy, it did cut the rate of alcohol consumption. He book-ends his work with historical explications of Prohibition's enactment and its eventual demise owing to lack of both sufficient political will and enforcement funds. VERDICT While there are other Prohibition narratives, e.g., Michael Lerner's ably done Dry Manhattan, acknowledged by Okrent, this sprightly written and thoroughly annotated work is recommended for both the general reader, to whom it is directed, and the scholar.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Both a rollicking recap of the Roaring '20s and a cautionary tale about how a government's attempts to legislate and monitor morality are nearly always doomed. Book- and magazine-publishing veteran Okrent (Public Editor #1: The Collected Columns (with Reflections, Reconsiderations, and Even a Few Retractions) of the First Ombudsman of The New York Times, 2006, etc.)former editor-at-large of Time, Inc., and managing editor of Time and an editor at Knopf, Viking and Harcourtjoined forces early with filmmaker Ken Burns, whose forthcoming PBS documentary on Prohibition rests on the foundation of Okrent's text, which in turn benefitted from Burns' research and sagacity. It all makes for a bracing cocktail. The author assembles a phenomenal cast of characters who emerged during Prohibition's conception, birth, swift life and death. Evangelist Billy Sunday, P.T. Barnum, Jack London, hatchet-wielding Carry Nation, Wayne Wheeler (of the Anti-Saloon League), Jane Addams, Warren G. Harding, Andrew Mellon, Eliot Ness, Al Capone, Andrew John Volstead and countless others strutted across the stage and then, frequently, disappeared. Okrent muses about the evanescent fame/notoriety of Wheeler, for example, who for a time made Senators tremble and was among the most powerful men in Americabut who's heard of him now? The author skips around the country to examine the vast dimensions of the crime, corruption and plain disregard for the law that ensued when the 18th Amendment went into effect in January 1920. Liquor flowed in from Canada; entrepreneurs took drinkers on long Caribbean cruises; mom and pop got prescriptions for "medicinal" alcohol from physicians benefitting from kickbacks; racism and xenophobia reigned; Catholic churches and other religious institutions suddenly needed much more wine for rituals; and brewers and blenders tried near-beers and grape juices. In addition, the tax coffers emptied while gangsters bathed in liquidity. It took the Depression to help end it alland the pervasive realization that only criminals were winning. Okrent's style is bracing and wry, his research is vast and impressive and his insight is penetrating. Intoxicating. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
