Rise and Fall of Prohibition

America embarked on the most radical social experiment in its history: a constitutional amendment banning alcohol. For thirteen years, the nation lived under the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, attempting to legislate morality on a scale never before attempted. Charles Hanson Towne witnessed this strange era firsthand, and his account captures not just the politics and policies but the human cost of Prohibition. He writes about speakeasies springing up on every corner, the corruption that spread from police to politicians, the organized crime that grew wealthy supplying a nation with what it desperately wanted, and the ordinary Americans who found themselves suddenly criminalized for a glass of wine. Towne examines the temperance movement's decades-long crusade, the unexpected consequences, and the eventual collapse of a law that could not be enforced. This book remains essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a nation can convince itself it can ban an entire category of behavior, and what happens when that conviction crumbles.