Review by Choice Review
McGirr (Harvard) travels down unfamiliar avenues in her examination of the US struggle to enforce the "noble experiment." She makes the compelling case that Prohibition enforcement was notable for its selectivity and that working-class, urban immigrant, and poor communities were hardest hit, whereas the flouting of the Volstead Act by elite, well-connected, white Americans went comparatively unchecked. Furthermore, McGirr contends that the war on alcohol cemented a broader sense of shared identity among immigrant ethnic workers and forged the basis for new political loyalties. Opposition to Prohibition, among other issues, motivated large numbers of working-class, urban, ethnic voters to come out to vote for Democratic candidates by the late 1920s and early 1930s, switching much of the urban North permanently from Republican to Democratic. McGirr also finds a direct link between Prohibition and the war on drugs. She asserts that Prohibition forged the bureaucratic structure, assumptions, and logic that underpin the current drug war, and further contends that the selective enforcement that marked the dry years has been replicated more dramatically in the current war. Of interest to those who want to learn more about Prohibition and/or the rise of the modern surveillance state. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Jeremy Monroe Richards, Gordon State College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Hollywood narrative of Prohibition as a time of gangsters spraying bullets from machine guns is blown wide open in McGirr's ambitious history of the 14-year period in early 20th-century America and its repercussions for social mores, public policy, and the criminal justice system. Using personal papers as well as records of state and federal commissions on enforcement, McGirr (Suburban Warriors), a professor of history at Harvard, delves into the details of the often uneasy alliances between Protestant temperance advocates, who fought for the Volstead Act and ratification of the 18th Amendment, and Klansmen, who helped enforce liquor laws on the local level. McGirr touches on oft-glamorized tales of bootlegging gangsters and speakeasies, instead choosing to focus on the stories of everyday victims of enforcement based on racial, religious, and class discrimination. This occurred in tandem with the racial integration of Southern bootleggers and speakeasy patrons. Both sobering and enlightening, McGirr's work gives Prohibition and its consequences a much-needed reexamination that provides insights relevant to today's War on Drugs. Photos. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
McGirr (history, Harvard Univ., Suburban Warriors) takes a fresh and fascinating look at Prohibition, arguing that it should not be viewed as a failed experiment, but as one of the defining political and social movements of the 20th century. The author skims over familiar stories about the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Al Capone, and the rise of speakeasies, and focuses instead on the heavy-handed enforcement of the law, especially its effects on immigrant and minority communities. The fight to ban alcohol led to raids on private homes, a growing prison population, and an emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation. McGirr draws a direct line from Prohibition to the current war on drugs, demonstrating that the 1920s saw a vast and lasting expansion of the federal role in law enforcement. The era also had significant political consequences, mobilizing working-class immigrants to join the anti-Prohibition Democratic party and bringing African Americans into the party for the first time since the end of the Civil War, leading to a coalition that would elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. VERDICT McGirr's new perspective on Prohibition is recommended for all readers interested in American history.-Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill © Copyright 2015. 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
The surprising ways in which a failed social experiment helped shape modern America. In this splendid social and political history, McGirr (History/Harvard Univ.; Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, 2001, etc.) offers a vivid account of Prohibition (1920-1933) and its "significant but largely unacknowledged" long-term effects on the United States. Writing with authority and admirable economy, the author traces the decadelong effort to discipline the leisure of urban immigrants, led by Protestant clergyman driven by "a powerful animosity toward working-class drinking in the saloon." With support from temperance groups and businessmen ("Until booze is banished we can never have really efficient workmen," said one manufacturer), the 18th Amendment banning the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages not only gave rise to the familiar Prohibition story of bootlegging, violence, and speak-easies but also had diverse, wide-ranging consequences that resonate to this day. Drawing on archival research, McGirr shows most importantly how the war on alcohol greatly expanded the role of the federal government, especially with regard to policing and surveillance. Prohibition awakened the nation's religious right, spurred the electoral realignment that resulted in the New Deal, and served as a "cultural accelerant" that began with the emergence of urban nightlife and drinking by women and youths and spread "ideals of self-fulfillment, pleasure, and liberation" across the country. These and other perceptive insights are contained in a bright, taut narrative that covers everything from the growing popularity of jazz to the selective enforcement of Prohibition in places from Chicago to Virginia to the tenor of everyday American life in these years. McGirr's discussions of the class aspects of the "dry" crusade will leave many feeling that boozeand the supposed criminality of the saloonwas the least of the problems. An important book that warrants a place at the forefront of Prohibition histories. General readers will love it, and scholars will find much to ponder. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
