Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Daniel Okrent's new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, tackles a topic that has been tackled many times before.  Since the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1920, making the manufacturing, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors illegal, many books have been written on what Herbert Hoover called America's "noble experiment."  This is not to say it was not worth writing, far from it, in fact.  Alcohol prohibition was one of America's most intrusive regulations into the personal lives of its citizens.  We still have much to learn from alcohol prohibition, and it also has relevance for enlightening our knowledge of many of our current prohibitions, such as the drug war.  And Last Call does an amazing job of not only compiling many interesting anecdotes from prohibition, but it also provides a narrative of many of the complex unintended consequences and events that caused prohibition and led to its repeal.

Find the article at SpringerLink.