Download Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Daniel Okrent 9780743277044 Books

Product details Paperback 480 pages Publisher Scribner; 1 edition (May 31, 2011) Language English ISBN-10 9780743277044 ISBN-13 978-0743277044 ASIN 074327704X

Last Call The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Daniel Okrent 9780743277044 Books Reviews

• This is one of the best political strategy books I've ever read. If you want to understand how a small political or policy fringe group can leverage it's voting power to overcome large majorities, this book is a step-by-step description for how that process can be achieved. On a more entertaining level, if you've ever wondered how America allowed itself to become a "dry country," how big-time mob syndicates got their start and prospered, how prohibition encouraged Americans to disregard and lose respect for the government and the rule of law, or just wondered about the history of the alcohol industry in the United States, you will not be disappointed in this book. Daniel Okrent has a masterful story-telling style of writing, that at the same time, is very specific and factorial. The book is marvelously researched. It is a fascinating story, told by a true master of the English language. I would recommend that you read this book, before watching the PBS special on Prohibition, you'll get much more out of the video.
• The ability to make Prohibition law is one of the most fascinating political and historical stories in American history. Getting the 18th Amendment passed through both houses of Congress, then 3/4 of the states, required a bizarre cobbling of alliances, from progressives to evangelicals the KKK - first to pass it, then to get it repealed.
  
  Okrent does a brilliant job bringing to life the characters who so passionately pleaded both sides of the case, and those who became heroes and villains in Prohibition's wake. While addressing the rise of mafia, he dispenses with all the romanticism that other authors like to evoke from that era - instead giving a grim, real-life account of the repercussions of the New America. Never sensational or hyperbolic, but also never accepting of the violence or corruption.
  
  Last Call deals far more with the politics of Prohibition than other books I've read on the subject, and does so with wit and a cast of characters that keep the reader engaged like few authors can. Short chapters and high-stakes storylines make this as much a can't-put-down drama as any good suspense novel, and I spent several nights up much later than I should've been reading "just one more chapter".
• Last Call is the best book I have ever read on Prohibition, the social policy experiment where alcohol was banned in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Daniel Okrent starts by discussing the origins of the temperance movement and how it turned into the first modern single purpose political action committee in the United States. He discusses how it was originally dominated by women, many of whom had also been key figures in the abolition movement, and were later fighting for women's suffrage.
  Okrent describes that as the movement picks up steam it becomes dominated by a male dominated more professionally organized group the Anti-Saloon League, which allies itself with the progressives to push for a federal income tax amendment to the Constitution. This amendment was ratified in 1913 and was necessary in order to achieve Prohibition because half of the tax revenue of the federal government came from liquor taxes.
  He describes how the alliance with the women's suffrage movement was augmented with support from corporate America, which believed that drinking lowered productivity, and nativist groups which disliked the German-American brewers Anheuser-Bush, Pabst, Schlitz and so on during World War I. Other allies included those susceptible to arguments about African-American stereotypes and fear of alcohol use in that community. The book goes on to tell the story of not only the political battles to get it enacted, but also how it was enforced and the failures of these policies to eventually how it ended.
  Creativity manifests itself in several ways in the book. First the unique story of how it was enacted has gone unparalleled in American history as the only time the Constitution was amended for social policy reasons. Some of the exceptions are great stories of creativity in politics. Medicinal use of bourbon by prescription, allowing households to ferment wine themselves using grapes, sacramental use of wine by rabbis and priests who sold it to their congregants legally in any quantity, and last but not least those who stockpiled unlimited quantities before it took effect.
  Smuggling was also a great story of creativity whether it be in pig bellies, coat pockets, cars, or boats. Ships would sell liquor just off the three-mile territorial water limits. All in all, it is a wonderful story of government policy gone wrong with many lessons to be learned still today. The creativity described in this book tells me that America is a culture of creativity although conformism is a strong countervailing force.