About the Book
In 1919, the United States embarked on the country's boldest attempt at moral and social reform: Prohibition. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol around the country. This "noble experiment," as President Hoover called it, was intended to usher in a healthier, more moral, and more efficient society. Nowhere was such reform needed more, proponents argued, than in New York City--and nowhere did Prohibition fail more spectacularly. Dry Manhattan is the first major work on Prohibition in nearly a quarter century, and the only full history of Prohibition in the era's most vibrant city.
Though New Yorkers were cautiously optimistic at first, Prohibition quickly degenerated into a deeply felt clash of cultures that utterly transformed life in the city. Impossible to enforce, the ban created vibrant new markets for illegal alcohol, spawned corruption and crime, fostered an exhilarating culture of speakeasies and nightclubs, and exposed the nation's deep prejudices. Writ large, the conflict over Prohibition, Michael Lerner demonstrates, was about much more than the freedom to drink. It was a battle between competing visions of the United States, pitting wets against drys, immigrants against old stock Americans, Catholics and Jews against Protestants, and proponents of personal liberty against advocates of societal reform.
In his evocative history, Lerner reveals Prohibition to be the defining issue of the era, the first major "culture war" of the twentieth century, and a harbinger of the social and moral debates that divide America even today.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. The Dry Crusade 2. A New Era? 3. A Hopeless and Thankless Task 4. The Brewers of Bigotry 5. The Itch to Try New Things 6. Vote as You Drink 7. I Represent the Women of America! 8. Hooch Joints In Harlem 9. Al Smith, the Wet Hope of the Nation 10. The End of the Party 11. A Surging Wet Tide 12. The Wet Convention and the New Deal Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index
About the Author :
Michael A. Lerner is Associate Dean of Studies at Bard High School Early College in New York City.
Review :
Lerner presents a riveting account of the attempt to rid the Big Apple of alcohol. The temperance movement forged unlikely alliances: Norwegian church groups found themselves allied with African-American labor activists who believed that Prohibition would benefit workers, especially African-Americans. Tea merchants and soda fountain manufacturers also supported Prohibition, thinking a ban on alcohol would increase sales of their products. But when Prohibition did come to New York, it was hard to enforce corrupt cops sometimes set up shop in speakeasies. Prohibition raids were 'marked by blatant displays of religious intolerances, class bias, and outright bigotry,' says Lerner. Working class neighborhoods, home to immigrants, were policed much more vigilantly than the dining rooms of WASP penthouses. Notions of a universal feminine morality were shattered by debates among women about Prohibition organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union insisted that all women supported the 'noble experiment,' but women journalists and flappers insisted that some members of the distaff sex wanted to drink. Though Lerner's study is informed by the relevant academic literature, he avoids tedious scholarly debates about Progressive Era reform, resulting in a fascinating study that will appeal to anyone who cares about the history of New York. Publishers Weekly (starred review) 20061204 Lerner draws on contemporary books, song lyrics, and especially popular press articles to argue that Prohibition--a quintessential attempt at 'moral uplift' in the Progressive tradition as well as an attempt to impose a uniform standard of behavior--resulted from the first major 'culture war' of the 20th century...This engagingly written, fully annotated study will appeal to all social historians of the 20th century and popular culture enthusiasts. -- Frederick J. Augustyn Jr. Library Journal 20070215 In this solid account of the calamitous effect of dry utopianism on New York City, Lerner explains how the Prohibition amendment was passed and why its execution failed...Lerner's book is a serious work, suggesting that there are still lessons to be learned from the 13 years, 10 months and 18 days of a utopian American delusion. There remain a number of Americans today who are filled with similar angry visions, longing to make them into law. -- Pete Hamill New York Times Book Review 20070311 Michael A. Lerner's Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City, explains just how upstate lobbyists, drunk only on power, snookered the Big Apple into supporting the Constitution's worst amendment. -- Jonathan Durbin men.style.com A fine history of a most troubling time. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 20070401 Dry Manhattan, a superb new book on America's experiment with Prohibition, should be required reading for anyone tempted to regulate private behavior by fiat. -- Charles Trueheart Bloomberg 20070314 [An] exceptionally interesting book...Dry Manhattan is in all important respects exemplary, a singularly useful and revealing contribution to our understanding of a time from which the nation probably never will recover. -- Jonathan Yardley Washington Post Book World 20070408 The book is not just a riveting historical study of corruption and crime but a smart reflection on the absurd attempt to ban alcohol, especially in a metropolis like New York. -- Liz Brown Time Out New York 20070322 Mr. Lerner's painstaking research is generously on display in Dry Manhattan, and without the usual Jazz Age cliches. Rather, he draws a disturbing portrait of the 'dry' movement and how it exploited the country's fear of immigrants, then arriving from Europe in vast numbers. -- Russ Smith Wall Street Journal 20070327 When Prohibition was introduced to America in 1919, President Hoover referred to it as a 'noble experiment.' In Dry Manhattan, Michael Lerner writes the first full history of that experiment, detailing its disastrous effects, criminal enterprise, speak-easies and corporate sponsorship from tea and soda producers. The enforced sobriety also laid bare inequities of race, class and gender. Lerner, a born and raised New Yorker and the dean of studies at Bard High School Early College, writes in a highly entertaining fashion, his droll humor evident from the title and on through every page. The idea to shut down perceived decadence only caused it to flourish, while providing a terrific story for a born storyteller to sink his teeth into. -- William Georgiades New York Post 20070325 As Lerner shows, in what I call delightful detail, the presumptuousness of Prohibition assured its inevitable failure. It was not advanced through moral persuasion or education but through legislative mandate, which could only seem high-handed and oppressive. Indeed, it acted as a spur to drinking as a form of self-expression and fashionable impudence...Lerner's arguments are deft, and his summoning up of character and incident makes Dry Manhattan as entertaining to read as it is informative. -- Katherine A. Powers Boston Globe 20070422 Nowhere was Prohibition more keenly felt or more hotly contested, Lerner argues, than in the diverse cosmopolis of New York City. The city's immigrant and working-class populations, disproportionately targeted by the dry lobby, resisted in great numbers by distilling their own alcohol and frequenting speakeasies. Meanwhile, liberalized ideas about drinking, sex, and leisure bred cultural rebellion in the middle classes, whose alcohol-filled night life became the subject of magazine reportage. New Yorker 20070507 How did a nation founded on tolerance and the pursuit of happiness find itself bound by an idea rooted in intolerance and social control?...In this colorful book two truths emerge: you can take a person to water, but don't expect them to drink; and single-issue politics is rarely that at all. -- Toby Moore Financial Times 20070428 Lerner has given us not a mere academic exhumation of a bygone New York, but an uncannily accurate description of New York last week and the city's fight against drugs. -- John McWhorter New York Sun 20070621 In an intelligent, authoritative, and sometimes hilarious account--centered, appropriately, on that greatest of drinking metropolises, New York City--Michael A. Lerner has dug deep into a range of sources, from court records and interest-group papers to New Yorker dispatches and dispatchers' reports, to tell the story of the 'Noble Experiment' with surprising freshness. The result of his prodigious research, reflective analysis, and vivid storytelling is like a highball at the Cloud Club: tart and tasty going down, leaving you lapping intoxicatedly at the ice cubes. -- David Greenberg Bookforum 20070601 More than retelling Prohibition's history, this work challenges readers to see how an early-20th-century debate over alcohol's place in U.S. culture profoundly influenced society...Rich, exciting, smartly written...A must read. -- T. D. Beal Choice 20071101 Fascinating. -- Frank Rich New York Times 20090315
