Books in Focus series

Between 1920 and 1933, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made it illegal for Americans to manufacture, sell, or transport alcoholic beverages. The goal of Prohibition was to stop the proliferation of saloons and end the poverty, depravity, family disintegration, and industrial accidents caused by excessive drinking. But Prohibition had unexpected consequences: speakeasies, bootleggers, and criminal gangs flourished as drinking became the thing to do amoung college students, flappers, and respectable middle-class Americans. The primary sources in this Jackdaw--including a letter to law enforcement agents from a distraught housewife, political cartoons, photographs, and exceprts from a Prohibition pro and con debate--trace the prohibition movement from its roots in the early 1800s through repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933.