Firebrands The untold story of four women who made and unmade Prohibition

At the nexus of the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment banning the production, consumption, and sale of alcohol and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote were four women-- Ella Boole, head of the Woman' Christian Temperance Union (WCTU); Texas Guinan, the epitome of the Jazz Age flapper; Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the assistant U.S. attorney charged with enforcing Prohibition; and Pauline Sabin, wealthy Manhattan socialite and repeal activist. In spite of four differing ideologies and four diverse backgrounds, the four women had one commonality: the acquisition and administration of power. Occupying both sides of the wet-dry divide, they raised their recently acknowledged voices and flexed their newly acquired political muscle even as they encountered setbacks and sexism. Much has been written about this ignominious episode in the nation's history, but Diliberto, the author of celebrated biographies and biographical fiction about women, examines Prohibition and its repeal through the lives of women who used their emergent emancipation to affect social and legal change. With culture wars raging, Diliberto's lively and cogent historical profiles are keenly relevant.