The War on Alcohol ─ Prohibition and the Rise of the American State

Prohibition, the period from 1920 to 1933 when the eighteenthamendment banned the manufacture and sale ofalcoholic beverages nationwide, is often considered a “nobleexperiment” that failed, a glamorous story of gangsters, flappers,and speakeasies. But as Lisa McGirr shows, Prohibitionwas not simply a curious interlude that left no trace. It wasthe seedbed for a huge expansion of the federal government,especially in its law-enforcement capacities. A key figure inthis expansion was Herbert Hoover, the first president tocommit the government to tackling a large-scale social problem:the rampant crime spawned by Prohibition. The waron alcohol, and the expansive state that waged it, laid thegroundwork for later wars on crime and drugs. McGirr showsthat the activist American state traces its lineage through theright as well as the left, the coercive policies of Hoover as wellas the New Deal of FDR.