Daniel Okrent

These days "Prohibition" is basically a synonym for "failure", but less than hundred years ago, preventing "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" in the US was thought to be a good enough idea to not only pass both houses of Congress, but also all but two of the 48 state legislatures by the fateful year of 1919. Last Call is the story of how the anti-alcohol crusade went from being a fringe rural movement to the unifier of a whole host of widely varying interest show more groups, from temperance activists to feminists and suffragettes, nativists, populists, evangelicals, socialists, and racists. I was really intrigued by the random endorsements that prohibition picked up (P. T. Barnum?), as it was an issue that cut across so many political lines that almost anyone could hitch their wagon to it. By far the most interesting to me of those political linkages was with female suffrage, as one of the main goals of Prohibition was to prevent men from drinking away their earnings and committing domestic violence; that something as seemingly obvious to a modern reader as granting women the right to vote was linked to the extirpation of alcohol is a reminder of far the political landscape has changed. Even though women ironically turned their backs on Prohibition after the passage of the 19th Amendment (and their discovery that they actually liked the freedom to drink), originally the movements were closely joined. Similarly with the classic liberal/conservative split - back then the progressive movement was gung-ho about Prohibition as a way to improve the lives of the uneducated, largely foreign lower classes, while established interests favored the status quo; whereas now it is liberals who favor laxer alcohol laws and conservatives who prefer restrictions on drinking.

Okrent has a bunch of great biographical detail on the major architects and forebears of Prohibition, many of whom are almost forgotten these days: Carrie Nation, axe-wielding radical of the Women's Christian Temperance Union; Wayne Wheeler of the ultra-powerful Anti-Saloon League; Andrew Volstead, of the infamous Volstead Act; Morris Shepard, author of the 18th Amendment. It's almost impressive, in a way, that these people were able to impose official sobriety in a country where the average person drank 7 gallons of pure alcohol per year (a stunning amount that is three times higher than the average today). They used all the tactics of any good interest group, like acquiring influence with legislators through various means, getting religious groups to sign off on their cause, distributing propaganda to children, wrapping themselves in the flag, and disparaging the patriotism of those who disagreed. Additionally, they tried to embed Prohibition in American society with larger strategies of varying degrees of reprehensibility: first, introducing a permanent income tax to offset the enormous revenue losses Prohibition represented (excise taxes on liquor made up 20 to 40% of federal revenue); second, refusing to reapportion Congressional seats in accordance with the 1920 Census to limit the influence of undoubtedly pro-alcohol Representatives from the cities, and eventually capping the total number of Representatives with the unprecedented Reapportionment Act of 1929; third, changing the makeup of the cities by passing immigration restrictions designed to limit the immigration of unfriendly Catholic or Jewish or non-WASP foreigners. The political angle is important: big-city saloons were vital political bases back then, and even after Prohibition connections to alcohol continued to provide wealth and power (fun fact: Joseph P. Kennedy is smeared as a bootlegger despite no evidence, but many families like the Bronfmans of the Seagrams brand did indeed illicitly make buckets of money).

Though Okrent doesn't really push the connection, the obvious modern parallel to Prohibition is the War on Drugs. Unfortunately there are problems with the analogy that make it seem like drug criminalization will last for much longer yet. First, drug use does not have the same long tradition in American society that drinking does. While a huge percentage of the US has taken one drug or another, drug use has never been legal and widely practiced in the same way that drinking was before Prohibition, so legalization is not seen as a natural "default state" the way that the pre-Prohibition status quo was. Second, while drugs like marijuana are huge cash crops, and the trade in other drugs like cocaine is billions per year, drugs aren't as central economically as alcohol was; few expect legalized and taxed drugs to make up more than a small revenue stream for any level of government. Third, there isn't really a large natural drug-using constituency in the US in the same way as Catholics or Jews with sacramental wine (Rastafarians are a tiny minority), so debate has to take place at a level of abstraction rather than at the visceral level of ethnicity, religion, and nativism. None of that changes the morality or sensibility of legalization, but it makes the debate slower. As Okrent's book shows, high-minded reform efforts don't always make final sense, and what makes sense often has nothing to do with good motives. While perhaps the one success of Prohibition was that it did indeed reduce the amount that people drank, the side-effects on society were nearly intolerable; yet Prohibition endured for over a decade, and was only ended due to the worst economic crisis in world history. We certainly haven't seen the last of these crusades. show less

Okrent presents a fascinating and thorough breakdown of the causes, practice (and lack thereof), and conclusion of fourteen years of Prohibition in America. The dreamy goal of the Anti Saloon League and other sponsors of the "dry" way of life thought that banning booze would elevate the American worker, end poverty, and perhaps even civilize uncouth immigrants who so favored the drink. The xenophobic reasons for the Volstead Act were quite clear--this was intended as a blow to the Irish, the show more Italians, the Jews, and in the south, against blacks who, it was claimed, became maniac rapists because of gin. The white wimmin must be kept safe, right?

The failure of Prohibition is well documented, and these days, celebrated. Drunkenness and night revels only increased. Small-time criminals developed the business acumen to found gangster corporations. The actual end of the bill came about, not just because of the public failure of it all, but because of the Great Depression. The federal government not only could not afford to enforce the law, but they desperately needed the tax money brought in by alcohol.

I read this book for research needs, and I found loads of good information. I would have liked a little more emphasis on Southern California, but that's pure selfishness on my part; there's no denying that New York, Chicago, and Detroit offered more dynamic settings to ficus on the drinking aspect of the Roaring Twenties. show less

Sondheim emerges as a grudge-holding genius who couldn’t tolerate criticism from anyone he hadn’t accepted as a collaborator, but frankly, given how badly other people recognized as geniuses behave, that seems pretty mild. His longtime anger at his mother and his desire for revenge are big themes (think Gypsy and Sweeney Todd, respectively).

An excellent narrative history of Prohibition in the United States, starting from the first stirrings in the 1840s through the end in the 1930s. As you might imagine, covering this period of time introduces many characters and situations to keep track of, but Okrent makes it manageable by focusing each section and chapter on some specific aspect or event. His style is lively and entertaining without being trivial or frivolous. Some folks might be put off a bit by some of his quirkiness, for show more instance at one point he compares one personality to someone in "The Simpsons" TV cartoon show. He also jokes how the unique spelling of "drys" defeats the best efforts of Spell Check. I think most readers will find the quirks a nice counterpoint to some of the more serious discussions in the book. I think "Last Call" is the best general history of Prohibition I've ever read, entertaining yet quite thorough and informative. show less