It might be a bold statement, but I personally feel that Prohibition was arguably the biggest mistake America ever made, with the possible exception of the Vietnam War. Ken Burns, already well known for making a great deal of extremely high quality films and documentaries about a variety of subjects (including the aforementioned one), has once again delivered a riveting and deeply interesting experience that no history aficionado should miss. Although this series is shorter than many of his others, it's no less intriguing as it delves into how the movement to get alcohol banned in the United States actually started almost a century before the amendment banning it was passed. We learn how it was endorsed by a lot of different groups of people (many of them women), and they all had different reasons for wanting to see it go. Many priests had heard countless stories of women being abused by their husbands, ordinarily mellow people being turned into brutes, and children being neglected all because of drinking. Many had seen how beer and wine could ruin not just one person, but whole communities. The film does a great job of showing every conceivable angle to the story of prohibition, and discusses in detail how people, many of them Irish and German immigrants who loved to drink, tried their hardest to make sure it wouldn't go anywhere. Many bar and saloon owners were convinced such a ridiculous act would never happen, as the federal government was too reliant on taxes paid by these establishments. Meanwhile, once prohibition actually came into effect, people who were law abiding citizens before the act became criminals just to get what they viewed as theirs in the first place, and those who were already criminals became even more wealthy, as many new opportunities were opened. Of course, you can't talk about this era and not bring up the mobster aspect of it. Thugs like Al Capone (who was sometimes seen as someone much more respectable than just a thug) ran huge, elaborate bootlegging operations that encompassed entire cities, had their minions kill or threaten anyone who stood in their way, and left a legacy on america that's still talked about now. Burns also masterfully explains how the horrendous flu pandemic of 1918 and the First World War, both of which left millions dead, contributed to a much more flippant and hedonistic way of living which resulted in flappers. Women came to realize that life was short and you can die at any moment, so they dove into a sexualized lifestyle that made their Victorian parents quite angry. Despite the fact that prohibition was tearing the country apart, people were still breaking the law left and right and drinking whenever they wanted to. Thousands of speakeasies were operated all across america. These carefree times would eventually come to a tragic and sudden end in 1929, when a stock market crash caused the most dire emergency america had faced since the Civil War. This is just a small selection of the things talked about in this documentary. If you're like me and you've already seen Burns' masterpiece on the vietnam war (probably the best thing he ever did), you'll feel right at home. The same narrator is here, and there's more than enough archive footage. All I can say is if you like to drink, and especially if you don't like to, then this is for you.
