The New Deal Book

Usually when I can't think of much to say about a book I'll go with "it was well-written", faint praise at best as one would hope a book that managed to get published was at least not poorly written. But I can't even muster up that much enthusiasm for this book. Maybe I've just been run ragged or fighting my biological impulse to hibernate lately, but I fell asleep more while reading Prohibition than any recent book I can remember. It didn't hold my attention at all, and some of the author's stylistic tics and repeated cliches bordered on off-putting.

The scope of the book didn't really live up to the sub-title, either. A good bit of time is spent on the development of the "dry" movement in America and the post-WWI push for a prohibition amendment, and then a here-and-there approach to the 13 years of Prohibition itself: biographical sketches of a bootlegger and a corrupt attorney general, some surveys of telling statistics, a couple of mentions of President Harding and Al Capone. And then the book ends on December 5, 1933, so any ways in which America really was changed as a result of Prohibition are left to the reader's observation and/or imagination.

I find the 1920's to be an interesting period in US history, especially in light of Prohibition, but that interest going in was the only thing that kept me going through the book. It just didn't deliver exactly what I was looking for. There were some interesting tidbits, but not the nuts and bolts I was more curious about. I have some other Prohibition-focused books on my shelf, though, and maybe those will yield more.