Synopsis
Prohibition has long been portrayed as a "noble experiment" that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers and speakeasies. Now at last Lisa McGirr dismantles this cherished myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government, the genesis of our contemporary penal state. Her deeply researched, eye-opening account uncovers patterns of enforcement still familiar today: the war on alcohol was waged disproportionately in African American, immigrant and poor white communities. Alongside Jim Crow and other discriminatory laws, Prohibition brought coercion into everyday life and even into private homes. Its targets coalesced into an electoral base of urban, working-class voters that propelled FDR to the White House. This outstanding history also reveals a new genome for the activist American state, one that shows the DNA of the right as well as the left. It was Herbert Hoover who built the extensive penal apparatus used by the federal government to combat the crime spawned by Prohibition. The subsequent federal wars on crime, on drugs, and on terror all display the inheritances of the war on alcohol. McGirr shows the powerful American state to be a bipartisan creation, a legacy not only of the New Deal and the Great Society but also of Prohibition and its progeny. The War on Alcohol is history at its best-original, authoritative, and illuminating of our past and its continuing presence today.
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About the Author
Lisa McGirr is professor of history at Harvard University and the author of the award-winning history of the new right, Suburban Warriors.
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The War on Alcohol : Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
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ISBN 10: 0393066959
ISBN 13: 9780393066951
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The War on Alcohol : Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
Published by
Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W., 2015
ISBN 10: 0393066959
ISBN 13: 9780393066951
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 6267607-6
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The War on Alcohol : Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
Published by
Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W., 2015
ISBN 10: 0393066959
ISBN 13: 9780393066951
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Condition: Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 6267607-6