Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (Daniel Okrent, 2010)

This book was written in parallel with a much-promoted Ken Burns mini-series - though not directly used in it.  Burns bores me at this point - same style, too plodding, too formulaic.  But this book was generally informative and useful.  A few take-aways:

1.  Drinking was a problem in 19th century America - there seem to be stats to support this view.  So there was a long run-up to Prohibition.  A need for change, even if this approach was incredibly ill-advised.

2.  It's enormously difficult to amend the U.S. Constitution.  And it happened.  (Actually twice, including repeal.)

3.  The 16th amendment - permitting a federal income tax - was a key milestone in the movement toward passage of the 18th amendment (prohibition).  Feds relied heavily on alcohol excise taxes going back to the Whiskey Rebellion - therefore there could not be Prohibition without an alternative revenue source.  (And Big Gov itself could never have arisen without the federal income tax - a whole different story.)

4.  Interesting discussion of the pre-Prohibition urban saloon as intertwined with urban political machines.

5.  Germans controlled the big breweries - so WWI anti-German environment was exploited to obtain passage.

6.  Amazingly effective leadership - primarily Wayne B. Wheeler - ran the "dry" movement.  I had no idea of the extent of control by "drys" over elections - and therefore politicians - at all levels of government.

7.  Didn't know about the extent of the shipboard rum-running - fleets sitting just outside territorial waters.  Didn't know how much product gushed through Detroit.

8.  Didn't know about the effect on California's somewhat-young wine industry.  They pulled up most of their vines and replaced with cheap grapes - easy to ship, and it was legal for folks to buy grapes (and ferment at home).

9.  Beaulieu Vineyards controls the "sacramental wine" exception - ties to Catholic Church and rabbis - huge plus for them when Prohibition ends.  No need to pull up their vines - religious market was large, plus lots o' product leaked out to non-religious end-users.

10.  Many parallels to today's War on Drugs.  Law enforcement corruption, diversion of resources, over-aggressive enforcement, citizen scofflaws, etc.  Social changes, including changes in drinking patterns (probably especially by women).

11.  Booze cruises - in international waters - led to today's cruise ship industry ("trips to nowhere" didn't exist prior to Prohibition).

12.  Classic coalition of "Baptists and bootleggers" interested in preventing repeal of Prohibition.

13.  Author states there were 1,345 American brewers in 1915 - but only 31 were up and running within three months after return of legal beer.  Prohibition led to a market controlled by a few major players selling bland product - a situation which wasn't corrected for decades.

14.  Interesting overlap with immigration "reform" - with echoes for ongoing debates on the subject.  Immigration in Prohibition era involved unreliable/undesirable southern and eastern Europeans - many Catholics - considerable fear that demographics would lead to votes for "wet" politicians.  Along with other bigotry factors - this leads to passage of the 1924 immigration "reform" law and its annual quotas.  Sets an annual ceiling of 2% of immigrants already in the U.S. as reported in census data.  To achieve the goal of keeping out newcomers - pretty much openly discussed - the act looked back to the 1890 census - before the undesirables started showing up!  

Ah, the fine intentions of the Progressive movement . . .