{"id":21968,"date":"2011-08-04T18:13:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T00:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=21968"},"modified":"2011-08-04T18:25:58","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T00:25:58","slug":"book-review-last-call-the-rise-and-fall-of-prohibition-by-daniel-okrent-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/04\/book-review-last-call-the-rise-and-fall-of-prohibition-by-daniel-okrent-2010.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okrent (2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Last<\/a>
\nLast Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition<\/a> by Daniel Okrent<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a wonderful history of the forces that led to the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act in the 20s, and then the forces that led to their eventual demise. It’s decently paced, mixing personalities and facts, in an attempt to explain how it was that a country that loved to drink so much ever forbade itself from doing so.<\/p>\n

Some of the best bits have to do with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. While we tend to think of the “Dries” as monolithic, instead they represented a remarkably diverse coalition, each with its own reasons for wanting Prohibition — the religious temperance movement, tycoons who wanted less inebriated workers, progressives who saw it as a way to uplift the poor, nativists who saw booze as an immigrant (Italian and Irish) problem, populists, suffragettes, the Klan … all of them pulled together and focused by some key individuals and organizations.<\/p>\n

An interesting bit of trivia: the Dries were responsible for the federal income tax, as it was the only way to wean Washington off of the excise taxes from alcohol, which made up a huge percentage of federal income.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it was the prospect of getting rid of the federal income tax that organized some of the country’s richest men to eventually bring down Prohibition (taxes did drop a bit, but never went away). They were joined by civil libertarians appalled by how intrusive the government had become in trying to (futilely) enforce the law, pragmatists that saw the law was not only not working but actually leading to higher crime rates, and by a public tired of the whole charade and outraged by legal overeaching by the Dries.<\/p>\n

It’s a fascinating story, and a lot of fun to listen to; the audiobook is narrated by the author, and he does a fine job of it. It’s an informative and fun look at an era most people don’t know a lot about aside from a few iconic memes (flappers, speakeasies, mobsters with tommy guns) and at social and political changes in American life that reverberate down to today.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a wonderful history of the forces that led to the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act in the 20s, and then the forces that led to their eventual demise. It’s decently paced, mixing personalities and facts, … Continue reading “Book Review: “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” by Daniel Okrent (2010)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-books","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":24250,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/05\/happy-repeal-day.html","url_meta":{"origin":21968,"position":0},"title":"Happy Repeal Day!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Dec-11 4:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Seventy-eight years ago today, a dangerously muddled social-legal experiment -- Prohibition -- was repealed (Utah approved the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, reaching the 3\/4 majority of states needed to enact it, negating the 18th).Cheers! #ddtb Embedded Link Repeal Day is December Fifth The official website of Repeal Day, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30381,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/27\/yes-this-seems-like-a-great-way-to-spend-law-enforcement-money.html","url_meta":{"origin":21968,"position":1},"title":"Yes, this seems like a great way to spend law enforcement money","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 27-Sep-12 5:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Not.'A study conducted by the Colorado Center on Law and Policy estimated that police forces in Colorado spend about 4.4 percent of their budgets enforcing marijuana prohibition, that the judicial system spends 7 percent on marijuana cases, and that 2 percent of the corrections budget also is spent on marijuana-related\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F07%2FMarijuana-Plant-Macro-1260469-224x300.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10948,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/09\/thats_a_remarkable_first.html","url_meta":{"origin":21968,"position":2},"title":"That’s a … remarkable First Amendment argument","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-May-07 3:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Verizon, fighting a law suit for turning over phone records to the government, is making certainly one of the more audacious legal defenses I've heard of late:\u00a0 it's protected speech,...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13382,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/05\/cia_without_torture_incon.html","url_meta":{"origin":21968,"position":3},"title":"CIA without torture? 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As the majority opinion had it:'The Fourth Amendment states that \u201c[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7248,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/04\/16\/hoist_by_their.html","url_meta":{"origin":21968,"position":5},"title":"Hoist by their own RFRA","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 16-Apr-05 8:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Social conservatives were overjoyed by the passage of RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 1990 to restrict government interference in religious practice. 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