Prohibition
Prohibition

Author: Edward Behr

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

Published: 2011-05

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1611450098

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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.

Dry Diplomacy
Dry Diplomacy

Author: Lawrence Spinelli

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2007-11

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780742560789

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The Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act of 1920 would transform American life, giving birth to the Roaring '20s with its bathtub gin, speakeasies, and booze-running gangsters. Yet, as Lawrence Spinelli so clearly shows, the prohibition of the manufacture, sales, and transport of alcohol would have wider repercussions. In a world of international relations deeply unsettled after what was thought to be the War to End All Wars, the crusade for temperance on the American home front would disrupt the critical Anglo-American alliance. Dry Diplomacy is the first complete treatment of the diplomatic ramifications of prohibition. Spinelli explores the widespread effects on international law, shipping, foreign policy, and trade. In this context, American interests appeared to be pitted against those of Britain as she sought to recover from the First World War by expanding trade, promoting domestic industries such as whiskey distilling, and reasserting shipping dominance in the sea lanes. American interference with international shipping--in order to disrupt what Presidents Harding and Coolidge deemed British alcohol smuggling--would lead to a diplomatic crisis in the mid-1920s. Drawing on international archives such as the Cunard Archives and the records of the U.S. Justice Department, Spinelli digs deep into an important chapter of American "independent internationalism."

American Public Policy
American Public Policy

Author: Dennis W. Johnson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1000631141

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This is a sweeping narrative of American domestic public policy—its triumphs, struggles, and failures over the past 120 years. In a larger sense, it is a reflection on how the United States has grown and matured, faced challenges and opportunities, and how its federal leaders and policymakers have responded or failed to confront pressing problems. Moreover, American Public Policy addresses the hurdles and challenges that still lie ahead. Four critical questions are posed and answered. First, what were the most significant adversities endured by the American people? Second, what were the landmark domestic policies crafted by the president, enacted by Congress, or issued in Supreme Court decisions? Third, what did they fail to do? Finally, how well have federal policymakers met the key challenges facing America: income inequality, racism, financial crises, terrorist attacks, climate change, gun violence, and other pressures? And what do we still need to do? This book reaches out to students of public policy, American government, US history, and contemporary affairs, as well as to citizens, journalists, and policy practitioners.

Prohibition’s Greatest Myths
Prohibition’s Greatest Myths

Author: Michael Lewis

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2020-04-01

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0807173037

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The word “prohibition” tends to conjure up images of smoky basement speakeasies, dancing flappers, and hardened gangsters bootlegging whiskey. Such stereotypes, a prominent historian recently noted in the Washington Post, confirm that Americans’ “common understanding of the prohibition era is based more on folklore than fact.” Popular culture has given us a very strong, and very wrong, picture of what the period was like. Prohibition’s Greatest Myths: The Distilled Truth about America’s Anti-Alcohol Crusade aims to correct common misperceptions with ten essays by scholars who have spent their careers studying different aspects of the era. Each contributor unravels one myth, revealing the historical evidence that supports, complicates, or refutes our long-held beliefs about the Eighteenth Amendment. H. Paul Thompson Jr., Joe L. Coker, Lisa M. F. Andersen, and Ann Marie E. Szymanski examine the political and religious factors in early twentieth-century America that led to the push for prohibition, including the temperance movement, the influences of religious conservatism and liberalism, the legislation of individual behavior, and the lingering effects of World War I. From there, several contributors analyze how the laws of prohibition were enforced. Michael Lewis discredits the idea that alcohol consumption increased during the era, while Richard F. Hamm clarifies the connections between prohibition and organized crime, and Thomas R. Pegram demonstrates that issues other than the failure of prohibition contributed to the amendment’s repeal. Finally, contributors turn to prohibition’s legacy. Mark Lawrence Schrad, Garrett Peck, and Bob L. Beach discuss the reach of prohibition beyond the United States, the influence of anti-alcohol legislation on Americans’ longterm drinking habits, and efforts to link prohibition with today’s debates over the legalization of marijuana. Together, these essays debunk many of the myths surrounding “the Noble Experiment,” not only providing a more in-depth analysis of prohibition but also allowing readers to engage more meaningfully in contemporary debates about alcohol and drug policy.

Grappling with Demon Rum
Grappling with Demon Rum

Author: James E. Klein

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-10-22

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0806185821

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Social classes collide over morality and social propriety in a brand-new state Well before the Volstead (or National Prohibition) Act of 1919, Oklahoma was dry. Oklahomans banned liquor at their state’s inception in 1907 and maintained the ban even after the repeal of national prohibition. In this book, James E. Klein examines the social and cultural conflicts that led Oklahomans to outlaw liquor and discusses the economic and political consequences of the ban. Grappling with Demon Rum identifies who favored and who opposed prohibition, showing that its proponents were largely middle-class citizens who disdained public drinking establishments and who sought respectability for a young state still considered a frontier society. Klein tells how the Oklahoma Anti-Saloon League orchestrated a dry campaign to raise moral standards, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life, twice convincing voters to support prohibition. Going beyond the usual evangelical-versus-ritualist, rural-versus-urban, and ethnocultural oppositions used by other historians to explain prohibition, Klein shows that Oklahoma’s immigrant and Catholic populations were too small to account for those voting against the measure—or for the large customer base that supported bootleggers. He points instead to the large number of working-class Oklahomans who patronized saloons, whether legal or not, and focuses on class conflict in early efforts to control alcohol. He also describes the trials of enforcement officers who worked to plug leaks in statewide and later national prohibition. A cultural and social history of liquor in early Oklahoma, Grappling with Demon Rum provides a fresh look at crusaders against vice at the regional level. In portraying this conflict between middle- and working-class definitions of social propriety, Klein provides new insight into forces at work throughout America during the Progressive Era.