Prohibition has long been portrayed as a “noble experiment” that failed, a newsreel story of glamorous gangsters, flappers and speakeasies. Now Lisa McGirr dismantles this myth to reveal a much more significant history. Prohibition was the seedbed for a pivotal expansion of the federal government and the genesis of America’s contemporary penal state.
A ground-breaking history of Prohibition and a new creation story for the powerful American state.
