I watched nearly all of the Prohibition documentary, despite them airing it at random times on random stations. i did not get to see it in order and I missed an hour aprox out of the total of sixish. It was excellent the way Mr. Burns' work generally is. what i particularly liked about it, was that it started with early temperance movements of the 19th century, which gave it a scope and context very few other attempts to cover the same issues do. I knew a lot of the things in it, but having grown up on the east Coast, the information on the west coast trade was almost entirely new to me. How Seattle that the guy running the west coast trade was an ex-cop who managed a near monopoly of alcohol importation from Canada with hardly any violence. He said money wasn't getting killed for, and ran it like a business using bribes and contacts rather than guns to supply the whole west coast. I love the Pacific northwest. There were also a lot of details about repeal that I'd either never learned or never put together coherently, and the usual charming first hand accounts. While I have all sorts of family history accounts of major historical events that my family lived through over the centuries, my family was not much effected by Prohibition, by being mostly teetotalers, or a glass or mug with dinner types. Being quiet, head down working class types, they simply went without for the duration for the most part.
Anyway, I heartily recommend Mr. Burns' documentary if you are interested in all about American History and politics. A lot of the demonize immigrants and POc stuff behind the Christian Right's support of dry laws still continues in modern politics to this day, as does the underlying debate about the role of government in American life.
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