Prohibition

Bob Batchelor | Winter 2022

A whiskey baron who murdered his wife in a jealous rage, George Remus led a life that embodied both the opulence and violence of Prohibition.

Editor’s Note: Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including

To Plan A Trip

Wayne Curtis | April/May 2007

Bootleg Paradise

Wayne Curtis | April/May 2007

Seeking a monument to Prohibition’s immense impact on American society, the writer finds it in a French colony.

Al Hirschfeld: The Speakeasies I Remember

Neil A. Grauer | June/July 2003

In a last conversation before his death at 99 this January, the artist recalled the places he visited, drew, and wrote about during prohibition in New York City. You can still lift a glass at a couple of them.

In 1933 the sale of alcoholic beverages became legal again in the United States—and the speakeasy died.

Introducing Prohibition to a Boozing Nation

Frederic D. O'Brien | May 2001

THE FIRST PROHIBITION LAW

Whiskey: The American Spirit

Frederick E. Allen | May/June 1998

Bourbon whiskey has had a long, rugged ride from the frontier to the top shelf.

After 200 years, bourbon whiskey appears to be coming into its own.

There Is Something about a Martini

Max Rudin | July/August 1997

It’s more than just a potent drink, and more than the inspiration for some handsome ancillary equipment. It is modern times, brought to you in a beautiful chalice.

In November 1943, as Allied leaders met in Teheran to plan the defeat of Nazism, Franklin Roosevelt asked Joseph Stalin to join in a toast. Inevitably, at that moment in history, the drink the American President offered was a dry martini.

Reflections on the Dry Season

Bernard A. Weisberger | May/June 1990

The voice down at the other end of the table was edged with irritation. “Damn it, Prohibition was a failure too. You’d think we’d have learned something by now!” Then my friend turned to the dinner party’s in-house historian. “Right, Bernie?”

What Happened in Hinton

Paul R. Lilly | July/August 1988

Back in Prohibition days, the citizens of a West Virginia town decided to crack down on bootlegging and prostitution. The author remembers it well.

How does one describe a small town? And how does one explain a town when it sets out to catch all its sinners? All I can do is tell you a little of the history of my hometown, Hinton, Summers County, West Virginia, as I remember it.

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Featured Authors

Atkinson, Rick

Rick Atkinson is the author of dozens of best-selling books on American military history, including The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with General David H. Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has also written a three-part narrative history of the U.S.

Bird, Kai

Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Blight, David W.

David W. Blight is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition at Yale University. Recently, Blight has written A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation, and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize.

Brinkley, Douglas

Douglas Brinkley, a distinguished professor of history at Rice University and Contributing Editor of American Heritage, has written more than 20 books, most recently The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (Harper 2009) and The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins 2007). Brinkley earned his B.A from Ohio State University University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1989.

Catton, Bruce

Bruce Catton (1899 – 1978) was the Founding Editor of American Heritage and arguably the most prolific and popular of all Civil War historians. He wrote an astonishing 167 articles for American Heritage, and won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia. Catton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Gerald Ford, in 1977, the year before his death.