Gioia Diliberto’s new work of nonfiction, Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition (336 pages; University of Chicago Press), is an immersive and meticulously researched examination of the forces behind the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which went into effect in 1920, and the contentious, years-long struggle that led to its repeal in 1933. The four women mentioned in Firebrands’ subtitle were key figures in Prohibition’s passage and its eventual repeal: Ella Boole, who led the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for many years; Mabel Walker Willebrandt, assistant U.S. Attorney General, who was responsible for […]
The Era of Prohibition as Feminist History: Q&A with Gioia Diliberto
by Christine Sneed
