| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Spirits of Defiance: National Prohibition and Jazz Age Literature, 1920–1933. By Kathleen Drowne. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. xii, 189 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8142-0997-1. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-8142-5142-0. CD-ROM, $9.95, iSBN 0-8142-9075-2.)

With the possible exception of the 1960s youth movement, few historical events are as difficult to discuss without the undue influence of their popular culture representations as Prohibition. From Eliot Ness and The Untouchables (1987) to Al Capone and Howard Hawks's original Scarface (1932), modern perceptions of the "dry decade" (1920–1933) are indelibly tainted by images of bootleggers, speakeasies, and Valentine's Day massacres. Surprisingly, however, there has been little discussion of the way literature treated the havoc wreaked by the Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act. Spirits of Defiance goes a long way toward disassociating Jazz Age alcohol consumption in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and the Harlem Renaissance from individual dipsomania—an overdone topic— to demonstrate how their "fiction ... doubled as cultural reportage" (p. 32).

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