The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

America declared war on alcohol, and alcohol fought back. Charles Hanson Towne's urgent account captures the most dramatic experiment in American social engineering: the thirteen years when the Constitution banned a part of everyday life. Towne traces the movement from righteous crusaders who saw salvation in sobriety to the speakeasies and bootleggers who proved that you cannot legislate desire out of existence. He documents the corruption that flowed as freely as the illegal bourbon, the politicians who pandered to wet constituencies while pretending to enforce dry laws, and the ordinary citizens who discovered that forbidden fruit tasted sweeter. The book illuminates a nation at war with itself, where the law demanded one thing and human nature demanded another. Towne's contemporary voice makes clear that Prohibition was never really about drinking, it was about who would control the soul of America. For readers who see in our current cultural conflicts the same forces Towne witnessed, this book reads like a warning from history.