Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition [Kindle Edition]

Daniel Okrent (Author)

Book Description

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.

From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing.

Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever.

Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax.

Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.)

It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing “sacramental” wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology.

Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Okrent, who has rescued an important, relevant, and colorful chapter of American history, explores Americans' relationship with the bottle dating back to the colonial era and analyzes the long-term effects of Prohibition on everything--from the rise of the Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan to language, art, and literature. Fast-paced and fascinating, his narrative assembles a wide collection of comical stories and outrageous personalities, such as the hatchet-wielding Carrie Nation. He explodes clichés and bypasses widely known tales of bootlegging and bathtub gin in favor of more unfamiliar accounts. Critics praised Okrent's elegant writing and careful research--even in all its details--and agreed with the New York Times Book Review that this remarkably fresh take on a forgotten era is "a narrative delight."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 8169 KB
• Print Length: 480 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (May 11, 2010)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003JTHVHY
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,693 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 132 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Intoxicating View Regarding The Implementation and Repeal of Prohibition May 10, 2010

By Crabigail Cassidy TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

This is an all-encompassing view of what lead up to the creation of the 18th ammendment(and its earliest roots which went back pretty far in american history) and its eventual downfall and lightening fast repeal.
I chose this book as a Vine selection because it sounded as though it went beyond the common perception of bathtub gin, speakeasies, and G-men in a Warner Bros. movie smashing trucks full of beer kegs. In fact, it did go way beyond that. Daniel Okrent's book is a lively source of all things Prohibition. He provides a rather in-depth history of how special interest groups such as the KKK and church groups and people such as Billy Sunday, Wayne Wheeler and Carrie Nation banded together to popularize the idea of prohibition and how the concept picked up steam politically via lobbying to enforce a law nationally that the public at large really didn't support. The book discusses the key players nationally who supported and also opposed this bill and provided background material/biographies of these people. The implementation of the bill as well as the go-arounds such as bootleg booze and speakeasies are discussed, and the reader is supplied with information regarding how this stuff (some of which proving quite toxic) was made. Also discussed is the general public disatisfaction with the bill and the reasons for its rapid decline/downfall in depression-era America.
One of the things I particularly liked (and possibly even loved) were some of the unexpected little gems such as the way alcoholic beverages were marketed to a pre-prohibition public, the background information on some of the beer barons and distillers and how they rode out the 'dry' spell. Of particular interest was the way in which the ordinary lives of the american people were changed. New products appeared on store shelves and near beers appeared (but had to be carefully marketed to avoid violation of the specific terms spelled out legally). Home winemaking became more popular. I also appreciated the extreme footnoting and indexing which referred back to specific portions of the ammendment and its execution.
The promotional information provided with my advance copy said this book would be the basis of a Ken Burns series on Prohibition. While reading this book, I kept that in mind. My greatest praise for this book is that I could see how easily the book could be transitioned and how a series would be as enjoyable a viewing experience as reading this book has been. In spite of the language used (you may need a dictionary to decipher some of the words that are no longer in common usage)this book isn't as dry as its topic suggests. It is very easy to read, yet thought provoking.
LAST CALL in general terms is an interesting look at Prohibition from multiple perspectives. I think it would particularly interesting to anyone who is into history, constitutional law, depression-era politics, political lobbying, advertising, special interest groups, or womens rights.

99 of 106 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars For shame, Okrent -disguising a profound analysis of American culture as a wonderfully readable, fascinating and amusing book May 17, 2010

By Mark Rutherford

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book masquerades as a book full of great stories and wonderful personalities - some well known, some utterly new - told with effortless wit at a pace that makes you keep breaking promises to yourself: "I'll read just ONE more chapter, before ...." {you fill in the blank: going to bed, making love on your wedding night, speaking before the UN General Assembly, surrendering to serve your term at Allentown).
But the mean thing about this book is that it also tells the whole story of prohibition, weaving together its emergence from various social, ethnic, political and religious roots, showing its connection to the great themes of the twentieth century, how prohibition was advanced by an alliance between what we would describe today as doctrinaire progressives, left-wing feminists and the religious right, and furnishing a social history of the West in the 19th, 20th and no doubt 21st centuries which more profoundly explains where we are and how we got here than many a more pretentious tome. It's just marvelous and will keep you thinking about it long after you've finally made your speech, formalized your wedding, served your time.

129 of 144 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining story of a transforming adventure in folly May 13, 2010

By Steve Summers VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Prohibition was the best of intentions; it was the worst of results. A burning passion to cure the world of intoxication begat a wildfire of unintended consequences that permanently changed the American political landscape like no event since the civil war. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution--the first to curtail rather than to protect liberty--was imposed in a bipartisan political landslide of moral fervor led by fiery evangelicals bent on saving Americans from Demon Rum: an idea that had gathered 60 years of steam & brimstone, and whose time had finally come. Prohibition also created powerful new constituencies that profited from its continuance. Even its detractors became hopelessly resigned to its permanence.

It was not a revolution made led by dull people. The morally excited are, for all their dryness (pun intended), more animated, more colorful than the skeptical or the wise. Here the dramatis personnae of this tragicomedy seem more than merely memorable, they come to life on the page. But even in the limelight of the author's wit, prohibitionists don't seem caricatured, uneducated or stupid. (How could they have known? The lessons of hindsight were waiting offstage.) The complex tale of their successful constitutional coup is chronicled here in far more complex depth and detail than you might expect, yet the narrative flows quickly among the actors and events without losing momentum. The avalanche of startling facts and grotesque statistics are leavened with enough really good writing to yield laugh-out-loud descriptions, outrageous quotes and incisive commentary. Along with familiar folks like Rev. Billy Sunday, Carrie Nation, Andrew Volstead, et.al., Daniel Okrent introduces us to the forgotten workaholics who engineered this disastrous triumph of prescriptive moralizing.

Not all the consequences of prohibition were unforeseen. Anti-booze activists were instrumental in passing the 16th Amendment in 1913 authorizing a federal income tax in anticipation of the end of alcohol taxes--then the federal government's 2nd largest revenue source (after tariff duties). The bulldog fixation on winning and keeping the prohibition prize created all sorts of odd bedfellows: suffragettes and Ku Klux Klansmen, Boston puritans and rural sharecroppers, and later on, the bootleggers and prosecutors, smugglers and judges. When prohibition finally arrived, it rode in on the coattails the anti-German hysteria of World War One: most of the nation's brewers had Germanic surnames. Widespread anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic sentiments had heavily fertilized the grass roots of the cause.

And so this catastrophically bad idea was made law by a lopsided legislative majority representing a demographic minority. The the constitutionally mandated congressional reapportionment to reflect the 1920 census was deliberately (and illegally) delayed 8 years to keep that majority intact. But nothing could prevent the unprecedented mass civil disobedience which followed prohibition's victory. The Twenties roared because all liquor laws (save the infamous Volstead Act) had been effectively swept away. Once the fruit was forbidden, it quickly became glamorous, accessible, and demand exploded. With the flotilla of smugglers, an army of bootleggers, and dense constellations of speakeasies came a flood tide of corruption that inundated nearly every police precinct, courtroom, and customs house in the nation. New fault lines appeared: civil service laws were bypassed to give the Anti-Saloon League control of federal liquor enforcement hiring, but state legislatures and local officials were often uncooperative (or obstructive) for a variety of reasons.

To prosecute so many millions of victimless crimes would have bankrupted America in a month. So the token fine and a metastasizing culture of bribery soon replaced enforcement. The profits of crime ballooned. Al Capone is alleged to have made $60 million in a single year. Soon the Klan would be deputized to terrorize moonshiners--and all too predictably, others. Later, Congress would pass the Jones Act "get tough" and "send a message"--like life imprisonment for repeat moonshine sellers. Sound familiar? Wood alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, and even deadlier intoxicants became common bootleg additives. The phrase "blind drunk" originated in prohibition. A neuropathic chemical pollutant would permanently cripple some 500 tipplers in Wichita. (The vindictive crocodile tears of sympathy would be echoed by defenders of Paraquat in the 1980s).

Even economics becomes mesmerizing as legally "dry" America experiences skyrocketing commodity prices for the ingredients of fermentation and the nation's residential cellars (and even bathtubs) are converted to forbidden production. But the irritations and absurdities of alcohol criminalization evolved slowly into political outrage, and like it's entry, prohibition's exit was kicked forward by the hard boot of circumstance: the stock market crash of 1929 and the the Great Depression. That it was overthrown so unexpectedly and so decisively is another part of a tale well worth telling, and in Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" it is wonderfully told. Almost none of this rollicking history is spent on prohibition's moral lessons or drawing parallels to the War on Drugs. They're just too obvious. If you've recently been bored by history books that don't hold your interest, this may be the kind of fun reading you''ve been waiting for.

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