Interesting stuff. I expected a book on Prohibition to be about people like Al Capone and Elliot Ness, but the personalities covered here are mostly people I had never heard of: Wayne Wheeler, George Remus, Harry Daugherty, Mabel Willebrandt.

Although there had been attempts to legislate Prohibition for years, it was Wayne Wheeler that really got things going. Wheeler was a lobbyist for the ASL – the Anti-Saloon League – and arguably the most successful lobbyist of all time. When we think of the political influence of lobbyist nowadays, it’s assumed that lobbyists are “buying” legislators through campaign contributions. In fact, what Wheeler did was not buy legislators; he got them elected; the ASL could command that many votes. A lot of the politicians the ASL “bought” this way were personally “wet” but politically “dry”, because they knew Wheeler and the ASL could get them defeated. According to author Edward Behr, Wheeler more or less personally prevented the election of Al Smith using the ASL.

George Remus – not Al Capone - was the nation’s most successful bootlegger. Remus, a lawyer, did this by exploiting loopholes in the Volstead Act – and by payoffs. For example, it was legal to buy alcohol for “medicinal” purposes if you had a doctor’s prescription, and liquor stored in government warehouse could be withdrawn for this purpose upon presentation of the proper documents. Remus was adept a getting those documents – or “reasonable facsimiles” – and getting government agents to overlook discrepancies. (At one point Remus was exporting thousand of gallons of “medicinal” Scotch whiskey TO SCOTLAND. It wasn’t actually getting there, of course). Remus was scrupulously honest in areas other than bootlegging; his whiskey was never watered down or rotgut re-labeled. He was famous for lavish parties – at one every female guest got a new car. He was eventually caught by a couple of honest Prohibition agents and went to prison in Atlanta; while there his trophy wife hooked up with one of the prosecutors and systematically looted his fortune. When he got out he shot her to death and got off on a temporary insanity plea.

Harry Daugherty was Attorney General of the United States during the Harding and Coolidge administrations and “on the take” in a spectacular fashion, protecting bootleggers and the politically connected (for a fee) while sanctimoniously preaching about the evils of alcohol. (Daugherty was also involved in the Teapot Dome scandal).

Mabel Willebrandt was Assistant Attorney General under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. She comes across as one of the few people in the Prohibition era who weren’t tarnished by graft. Willebrandt was a firm believer in enforcing the law the way it was written, even though she wasn’t all that enthusiastic about Prohibition herself; she saw to it, to the best of her ability, that bootleggers were punished and corrupt officials dismissed. But even she went a little haywire at the end; after retiring from government she took an extremely lucrative position with Fruit Industries, a California firm that made a concentrated “raisin cake” called Vine-Glo that could be easily converted to homemade wine (in fact there were directions on the package that said “don’t do this, with Vine-Glo or it will ferment to wine”).
Behr spends some time on the overall effect of Prohibition. It’s noted that at first it seemed to be working; arrests for public drunkenness went way down, there were significantly fewer domestic violence issues, and fewer drunk driving accidents. However, things turned around once the bootleggers got going. It’s estimated that per capita alcohol consumption actually went up during Prohibition, and alcohol related deaths definitely went up (often from tainted product; see the section on “Jake Leg” in Death in the Pot. It’s suggested that widespread and plainly visible corruption in the legal system lead to disrespect for it; certainly possible but I don’t know how you would test that.

Nonetheless, efforts to legislate morality continue; it’s just too tempting for people.

Well written; an easy read. Endnotes, a short bibliography, pertinent illustrations, and a useful index. Recommended, especially for people who are under the impression that current politicians are uniquely corrupt. ( )

An easy to read introduction to the Prohibition Era.
I too have spotted some inaccuracies (and I see from other reviews there are more than I expected), and it's true the book sometimes floats away from the subject matter (the chapter about Chicago was basically NOT about Prohibition). But if you are a newcomer to the Prohibition Era - like I was when I read this book - and you're just trying to get a feeling for this time period and then move on to more in-depth works on the subject, it does the job.

The first part is maybe the more interesting. It deals with the social, political and in part the economical atmosphere at the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century that permitted the idea of Prohibition to become a reality. Having now read also the more accurate and in-depth treatment offered by Okrent in his book "Last Call", I know this is a partial analysis, still it give an idea of why Prohibition found such a strong support on its way to becoming a law in the USA.
It also offers an introduction (if in many instances very short and essential) of the main actors in the struggle on both sides.

The central part deals with Prohibition proper, or rather to the time of the actual Prohibition. But I was a little disappointed. There is an attempt at a social analysis here, but on the whole the author seems to rely heavily on anecdotes. Granted, there's nothing wrong with it on a general level, but that's certainly not enough to give a feel of how Prohibition really impacted on the lives of so many people, or the role it plaid in the changing of costumes - especially among young people - or the rise of jazz, or the escalation of crime, or a few other matters.
We still find introductions to many important players (again short and essential like in the first part), with the only exception of the life of George Remus, which, for some reason, is explore in depth. Yes, it was interesting, but not so much - in my opinion - to take up a few chapters.
On the whole, it gave me the impression to be a bit superficial, although you do get an idea of how it was in those days.

The last part was disappointing. The reasons why Prohibition was repealed are very superficially and quickly explored. I felt as if much of what was behind it was just left out (and Okrent's book confirmed this when I read it). The repeal of Prohibition is related in very few pages, very fast, and you don't really get a good idea of why it happened.

On the whole, not the best book on Prohibition I read, but still an easy introduction to it. ( )

3156. Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America, by Edward Behr (read 5 Feb 1999) This is a sloppily written, poorly researched book, with few and inadequate footnotes. It is not history, it is commentary told in a sort of time-line fashion. It is too 'popular' and is really a book written for non-students. It is not great reading. and has obvious mistakes in it, such as saying that LaGuardia beat Jimmy Walker for mayor of New York in 1929, whereas in that year the exact opposite happened: Walker beat LaGuardia. A better book on Prohibition is Deliver Us from Evil, by Norman H. Clark, which I read 6 Apr 1995. ( )