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Book Summary and Reviews of Last Call by Daniel Okrent

Last Call by Daniel Okrent

Last Call

The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

by Daniel Okrent

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  • Published:
  • May 2010, 480 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Last Call is a narrative history of Prohibition. It explains how Prohibition happened, what life under it was like, and what it did to the country.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [A]n assiduously researched, well-written, and continually eye-opening work on what has actually been a neglected subject." - Publishers Weekly

"This sprightly written and thoroughly annotated work is recommended for both the general reader, to whom it is directed, and the scholar." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. Okrent's style is bracing and wry, his research is vast and impressive and his insight is penetrating." - Kirkus Reviews

"Okrent asks and answers some important questions in this fascinating exploration of a failed social experiment." - Booklist

"This is history served the way one likes it, with scholarly authority and literary grace. Last Call is a fascinating portrait of an era and a very entertaining tale." - Tracy Kidder

"Daniel Okrent's Last Call is filled with delightful details, colorful characters, and fascinating social insights. And what a great tale! Prohibition may not have been a lot of fun, but this book sure is." - Walter Isaacson

"Last Call is - I can't help it - a high, an upper, a delicious cocktail of a book, served with a twist or two and plenty of punch." - Evan Thomas, Newsweek

This information about Last Call was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent was the first public editor of The New York Times, editor-at-large of Time, Inc., and managing editor of Life magazine. He worked in book publishing as an editor at Knopf and Viking, and was editor-in-chief of general books at Harcourt Brace. He was also a featured commentator on Ken Burns's PBS series, Baseball, and is author of four books, one of which, Great Fortune, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history. Okrent was also a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he remains an Associate. He lives in Manhattan and on Cape Cod with his wife, poet Rebecca Okrent. They have two children.

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