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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.
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.
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.
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