I read this book at 5+ years sober. Fascinating to learn the origins of alcohol and the temperance movement and how the circle might just be repeating.

This book does a good job of providing a short history on the American prohibition era in general, along with other stories about the American temperance movement. The most interesting part of the book was the impact that the war on alcohol had on society as a whole. From the rise of the Jazz era to the increasing power of the state and police force, its impact was widespread and McGirr does a great job of telling that portion of the history.

This is a well researched book with a very interesting thesis, that prohibition paved the way for an expanded US federal government. It gives a concise history of prohibition, focused on the political and social battles and changes.

Prohibition, in her telling, not only led to the rejection of the constrained social mores that created the dry sentiment (thereby paving the way for the roaring 20s and a flowering of things like jazz), but it also led to the increased political consciousness of urban immigrants and then to the rise of FDR and the middle 20th century democratic party. Immigrants, who were more likely to be drinkers, felt targeted not only by the 18th amendment and the resulting enforcement laws, but also felt resentment from unequal enforcement. The rich, white protestants (portrayed in The Great Gatsby and elsewhere) feared little from the enforcement and judiciary, but the poor, immigrant (Italians, Poles, and Eastern Europeans are discussed in detail), and/or non-White were disproportionately targeted. Unsurprising but infuriating nonetheless. And in the face of the resentment towards prohibition, urban immigrants organized and began asserting their political power more consistently.

There are innumerable parallels with the drug war, and McGirr actually makes that comparison and shows how many of those involved in the political and bureaucratic machinery of prohibition also were involved in the subsequent development of US and international narcotics enforcement (including, due to Western panic around Latino and Mexican immigration, adding marijuana as a schedule A drug equal to heroin). The rhetoric around the 1930s-1940s narcotics campaign mirrored not only that from prohibition but also that from the Nixon/Regan drug war revival in the 1970s and 1980s.

Enforcement of prohibition took lots of money, men, and laws, laws which were centralized in the federal government. This structure, McGirr says, made US Citizens more comfortable with a larger, more active, more punitive, and more intrusive federal government. This set the stage not only for acceptance of FDRs new deal, but also to the exponential expansion of federal scope and power in the 20th century.

I love books that make connections and show (unintended) consequences and impacts. Prohibition is often treated as a silly blip of a mistake in legislating morality, so it was really interesting to learn about the impacts the Prohibition actually had.

I want to thank the author and Netgalley for gifting me the audio version. This is a fasinating read and full of information on Prohibition. I highly recommend it for those history buffs out there!

This is an eye-opening, fascinating study of how the earliest roots of the dry movement found fertile ground in a nativist, Protestant moral panic seeing folk devils among Catholic immigrants and African-Americans. The federalization of the movement incorporating the KKK and other paramilitary enforcers along the way defined the national approach to domestic crime in ways that are still with us while also providing a path forward for the Democratic Party from the Al Smith 1928 presidential campaign to FDR to today's dynamic between the major parties as well as white grievance politics in general.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Really good read, wouldn't mind rereading eventually

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

I listened to the new audiobook version of this book and while it was very dense, I loved it. I think I would have retained more of the information if it had been paper, because there was so much , but I still learned many things about our history that I never knew or that we try to hide. I want to talk it about it so much, but I will spare you the spoilers. The narrator managed to provide the information in a way that kept me intrigued and I liked listening to it. I recommend this for anyone who lives in the US, not just those of us who still deal with the legislation that we ended up with!