Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Author: Daniel Okrent
Rating: â 5/5
Date Read: 2014/03/16
Pages: 480
Almost a hundred years after the fact, I think itâs safe to say that prohibition was a pretty bad idea. Some good things came from it: womenâs suffrage was tangled up in the issue, and we also got some damn good cocktails out of the deal. I mean, they had to cover up that bathtub gin somehow, and, well into college, I continued that fair tradition with off-brand gin of approximately the same quality. But, generally, prohibition didnât go well.
Mostly, prohibition shows off the worst that the good oleâ U S of A has to offer. Thereâs the obvious paternalistic religious wackjobs, the âseriously, I canât believe they even got away with being this racistâ white dudes (Germans, Irish, and Catholics need not apply, of course), and the gangsters that are still the subject of countless films (Al Capone, anyone?). But, beneath the mythology, there was some deeply interesting and messed stuff going on. One thing I wasnât aware of was the blatant disregard for redistricting, meaning that white protestants living in, say. Iowa districts had relatively more representation than the largely immigrant populations of the largest cities.
Last Call covers everything: Frances Willard, the WCTU, the ASL, rum runners (did you know that prohibition helped to turn the Bahamas into a modern country? If youâve ever been to awesome resorts and beaches in Nassau, you can thank prohibition; if you took a booze-cruise to get there, you can thank it doubly), âmedicinalâ alcohol hawkers, grape sellers, and loads more. Once you get past the boring political stuff (which takes up the first part of the book), itâs hard to put down.
The cool thing about reading about prohibition is that it is actually pretty timely. Right now, marijuana legalization is gaining popularity amongst the country, with two states legalizing it for recreational purposes and (hopefully) more on the way. Itâs been an interesting change in rhetoric from âthe war on drugsâ (remember D.A.R.E.? Remember how ineffective that was?) to a realization that marijuana is actually medically useful (not to mention non-addictive, not harmful to health, possibly able to regulate blood sugar, and generally awesome). And yeah, while there are still wackjobs that will tell you that getting high will turn us all into crazy stoners, itâs hard to argue with the millions of dollars in tax revenue Colorado pulled in during January 2014.
So yeah, I recommend this, not only to those who want to understand what was happening in the U.S.A. in the 1920âs, but also those who want to understand whatâs going on right now.