Prohibition, Protestant Unity, and Progress

In the popular imagination, Prohibition is strewn with familiar imagery: speakeasies, bootleggers, police with axes, ready to pour dozens of barrels of whiskey down the drain, Al Capone's mugshot or the ghastly aftermath of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Fortunately, Richard Gamble's "'Two Kaiser's in the Same Grave': 100 Years Since Prohibition" places this episode in American history in a broader context of a dual war on alcohol and Germany and demonstrates the larger significance of this fascinating time in our national past. For, as the author shows, Prohibition unified disparate elements in American society generally and American Protestantism specifically in an effort to make America and even the world dry and democratic.