Liberated Spirits
Two Women Who Battled Over Prohibition
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A provocative new take on the women behind a perennially fascinating subject--Prohibition--by bestselling author and historian Hugh Ambrose.
The passage of the 18th Amendment (banning the sale of alcohol) and the 19th (women's suffrage) in the same year is no coincidence. These two Constitutional Amendments enabled women to redefine themselves and their place in society in a way historians have neglected to explore. Liberated Spirits describes how the fight both to pass and later to repeal Prohibition was driven by women, as exemplified by two remarkable women in particular.
With fierce drive and acumen, Mabel Willebrandt transcended the tremendous hurdles facing women lawyers and was appointed Assistant Attorney General. Though never a Prohibition campaigner, once in office she zealously pursued enforcement despite a corrupt and ineffectual agency.
Wealthy Pauline Sabin had no formal education in law or government but she too fought entrenched discrimination to rise in the ranks of the Republican Party. While Prohibition meant little to her personally--aristocrats never lost access to booze--she seized the fight to repeal it as a platform to bring newly enfranchised women into the political process and compete on an equal footing with men.
Along with a colorful cast of supporting characters, from rumrunners and Prohibition agents on the take to senators and feuding society matrons, Liberated Spirits brings the Roaring Twenties to life in a brand new way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This disjointed narrative centers on two women, lawyer Mabel Walker Willebrandt and socialite Pauline Sabin, who both understood "the importance of the moment" the passage of Prohibition and women's suffrage in quick succession but ended up on opposite sides of the liquor ban. The authors' argument that the success or failure of Prohibition was often measured by the public in terms of the success or failure of these two women is vague and unconvincing. As U.S. assistant attorney general, Willebrandt prosecuted Prohibition violators, so Americans were likely aware of her work, but what they thought of it remains unexamined. New Yorker Sabin represents the anti-prohibitionists (or the "wets"); a rising voice within the Republican Party, she eventually sided with the faction that believed the amendment unconstitutional and ineffective. Appearing throughout the book are accounts of rumrunner Roy Olmstead, who serves as an example of the lawbreakers Willebrandt contended with. The authors skillfully handle these sections, which perk up the tale a bit, but the main personalities here had little interaction with one another, which inevitably saps narrative tension. The link between Prohibition and women's suffrage is an intriguing and somewhat underexplored angle, but interested readers won't find a gripping story here.
