The extraordinary effort to ban drink must be understood as part of an American culture war, one framed between the country and the city, between the native-born (white Protestants) and foreign-born (Catholics and Jews), between religion and science, between homogeneity and cosmopolitanism, and, of course, between 'drys' and 'wets'.

The lecture will show how Prohibition animated combatants on both sides, generating two Americas that were barely comprehensible to each other, and how the truce declared during depression and war would not last.

A lecture by Gary Gerstle 28 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/prohibition

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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