Lisa McGirr’s book, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State, argues that alcohol was a major part of the New Deal and previous scholarship concerning alcohol has marginalized the subject or emphasized the failure of Prohibition. Contrary to this scholarship, McGirr claims the opposite, “that beer took its place in the vanguard of New Deal measures” (xiii). Referring to the title of her book, McGirr convincingly proves that the war on alcohol was waged on African Americans, the immigrant population, and against poor white communities, most notably seen through the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan. While Prohibition was significant in leading to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the very discrimination that
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By going into detail about the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, the author submits that Prohibition remade party politics across the United States. It was because of these two political movements that the federal government began to target those Americans who attended saloons: the working class, the poor, and often immigrants. This focus on a select group of individuals in society led to a large shift in the political support of the Republicans to the Democrats, most specifically by African-Americans. On this note, McGirr goes into extreme depth about the Ku Klux Klan and how other vigilante groups enforced the dominance of white Protestant citizens. Because the majority of immigrants were Catholic and resorted to drinking, this created an enormous amount of animosity towards the immigrant population. Additionally, the Ku Klux Klan focused its efforts on …show more content…
By undertaking the subject in its entirety, McGirr repositions Prohibition as a central focus of the New Deal. Furthermore, the ideas put forth by the author resonate profoundly in ways that can still be applied to society today. Through the examination of the Prohibition during and predating the era of the New Deal, Lisa McGirr’s book The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State successfully address the subject of Prohibition and is a worthy addition to the study of immigration, drugs, the carceral state, and especially
By going into detail about the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, the author submits that Prohibition remade party politics across the United States. It was because of these two political movements that the federal government began to target those Americans who attended saloons: the working class, the poor, and often immigrants. This focus on a select group of individuals in society led to a large shift in the political support of the Republicans to the Democrats, most specifically by African-Americans. On this note, McGirr goes into extreme depth about the Ku Klux Klan and how other vigilante groups enforced the dominance of white Protestant citizens. Because the majority of immigrants were Catholic and resorted to drinking, this created an enormous amount of animosity towards the immigrant population. Additionally, the Ku Klux Klan focused its efforts on …show more content…
By undertaking the subject in its entirety, McGirr repositions Prohibition as a central focus of the New Deal. Furthermore, the ideas put forth by the author resonate profoundly in ways that can still be applied to society today. Through the examination of the Prohibition during and predating the era of the New Deal, Lisa McGirr’s book The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State successfully address the subject of Prohibition and is a worthy addition to the study of immigration, drugs, the carceral state, and especially