In 1929, it was estimated that every week bootleggers brought twenty-two thousand gallons of whiskey, moonshine and other spirits into Washington, D.C.'s three thousand speakeasies. H.L. Mencken called it the "thirteen awful years," though it was sixteen for the District. Nevertheless, the bathtub gin swilling capital dwellers made the most of Prohibition. Author Garrett Peck crafts a rollicking history brimming with stories of vice, topped off with vintage cocktail recipes and garnished with a walking tour of former speakeasies. Join Peck as he explores an underground city ruled not by organized crime but by amateur bootleggers, where publicly teetotaling congressmen could get a stiff drink behind House office doors and the African American community of U Street was humming with a new sound called jazz.

The great Potomac River begins in the Alleghenies and flows 383 miles through some of America's most historic lands before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. The course of the river drove the development of the region and the path of a young republic Maryland's first Catholic settlers came to its banks in 1634 and George Washington helped settle the new capitol on its shores. During the Civil War the river divided North and South, and it witnessed John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the bloody Battle of Antietam. Author Garrett Peck leads readers on a journey down the Potomac, from its first fount at Fairfax Stone in West Virginia to its mouth at Point Lookout in Maryland. Combining history with recreation, Peck has written an indispensible guide to the nation's river.

The word ""prohibition"" tends to conjure up images of smoky basement speakeasies, dancing flappers, and hardened gangsters bootlegging whiskey. Such stereotypes, a prominent historian recently noted in the Washington Post, confirm that Americans' ""common understanding of the prohibition era is based more on folklore than fact."" Popular culture has given us a very strong, and very wrong, picture of what the period was like. Prohibition's Greatest Myths: The Distilled Truth about America's Anti-A Alcohol Crusade aims to correct common misperceptions with ten essays by scholars who have spent their careers studying different aspects of the era. Each contributor unravels one myth, revealing the historical evidence that supports, complicates, or refutes our longA -held beliefs about the Eighteenth Amendment. H. Paul Thompson Jr., Joe L. Coker, Lisa M. F. Andersen, and Ann Marie E. Szymanski examine the political and religious factors in early twentiethA -century America that led to the push for prohibition, including the temperance movement, the influences of religious conservatism and liberalism, the legislation of individual behavior, and the lingering effects of World War I. From there, several contributors analyze how the laws of prohibition were enforced. Michael Lewis discredits the idea that alcohol consumption increased during the era, while Richard F. Hamm clarifies the connections between prohibition and organized crime, and Thomas R. Pegram demonstrates that issues other than the failure of prohibition contributed to the amendment's repeal. Finally, contributors turn to prohibition's legacy. Mark Lawrence Schrad, Garrett Peck, and Bob L. Beach discuss the reach of prohibition beyond the United States, the influence of antiA -alcohol legislation on Americans' longA term drinking habits, and efforts to link prohibition with today's debates over the legalization of marijuana. Together, these essays debunk many of the myths surrounding ""the Noble Experiment,"" not only providing a more inA -depth analysis of prohibition but also allowing readers to engage more meaningfully in contemporary debates about alcohol and drug policy.

A chronicle of the American experience during World War I and the unexpected changes that rocked the country in its immediate aftermath. The Great War's bitter outcome left the experience largely overlooked and forgotten in American history. This timely book is a reexamination of America's first global experience as we commemorate World War I's centennial. The U.S. had steered clear of the European conflagration known as the Great War for more than two years, but President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly led the divided country into the conflict with the goal of making the world "safe for democracy." The country assumed a global role for the first time and attempted to build the foundations for world peace, only to witness the experience go badly awry and it retreated into isolationism. Though overshadowed by the tens of millions of deaths and catastrophic destruction of World War II, the Great War was the most important war of the twentieth century. It was the first continent-wide conflagration in a century, and it drew much of the world into its fire. By the end of it, four empires and their royal houses had fallen, communism was unleashed, the map of the Middle East was redrawn, and the United States emerged as a global power - only to withdraw from the world's stage. The Great War is often overlooked, especially compared to World War II, which is considered the "last good war." The United States was disillusioned with what it achieved in the earlier war and withdrew into itself. Americans have tried to forget about it ever since. The Great War in America presents an opportunity to reexamine the country's role on the global stage and the tremendous political and social changes that overtook the nation because of the war.