A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the US Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.
From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing.
Chapter 1. Thunderous Drums and Protestant Nuns
Chapter 2. The Rising of Liquid Bread
Chapter 3. The Most Remarkable Movement
Chapter 4. “Open Fire on the Enemy”
Chapter 6. Dry-Drys, Wet-Drys, and Hyphens
Chapter 7. From Magna Carta to Volstead
Chapter 9. A Fabulous Sweepstakes
Chapter 10. Leaks in the Dotted Line
Chapter 11. The Great Whiskey Way
Chapter 12. Blessed Be the Fruit of the Vine
Chapter 13. The Alcohol That Got Away
Chapter 16. “Escaped on Payment of Money”
Chapter 18. The Phony Referendum
Chapter 20. The Hummingbird That Went to Mars
Chapter 21. Afterlives, and the Missing Man
Appendix: The Constitution of the United States of America