cover of episode 161: An Epilogue Toast to Prohibition’s End with Author Daniel Okrent

161: An Epilogue Toast to Prohibition’s End with Author Daniel Okrent

2024/7/29
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Dan Okrent: 本书的创作灵感源于作者在研究洛克菲勒中心历史时,发现20世纪20年代早期纽约市一些房产价格异常之高,这些房产都曾是地下酒吧。这引发了作者对禁酒令时期美国社会状况的深入思考。禁酒令的出台并非民意所向,它限制了个人自由,与宪法中唯一限制个人行为的另一条修正案(废除奴隶制)具有某种荒谬的相似性。禁酒令的失败在于它无法压制人们对酒精的需求,这证明了无法通过立法来压制人类的欲望。作者的研究还纠正了长期以来关于肯尼迪家族参与走私的传闻,并揭示了禁酒令支持者来自政治光谱两极的复杂性,以及韦恩·惠勒作为一位极具影响力但最终被遗忘的游说者的角色。禁酒令时期,酒精的获取比人们通常认为的更容易,而禁酒令废除后,由于新的法规的出台,酒精的获取反而变得更受限制。禁酒令催生了全国犯罪集团的形成,因为大规模的酒精走私需要有组织的犯罪集团来进行运作。许多关于禁酒令时期黑帮的传说都是好莱坞电影塑造的,与现实情况存在偏差。内斯在打击犯罪方面并没有人们想象的那么有效,他的功绩被夸大了。禁酒令时期的黑帮主要来自贫困的移民家庭和腐败的执法部门。禁酒令是一个彻底的失败,它带来了腐败和负面影响,不应该被再次尝试。 Greg Jackson: 作为访谈者,Greg Jackson 与 Dan Okrent 就禁酒令的诸多方面进行了深入探讨,包括禁酒令的支持者、禁酒令的执行、禁酒令对社会的影响以及禁酒令的废除。他表达了对禁酒令历史的兴趣,并就一些具体的历史人物和事件提出了问题,例如梅贝尔·沃克·威勒布兰特和艾略特·内斯。他还就新闻媒体的偏见问题与 Dan Okrent 进行了讨论,并就如何避免被新闻媒体的偏见所影响提出了建议。

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Cheers to Professor Jackson’s post Prohibition conversation with distinguished author Daniel Okrent! Dan is the the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition), winner of the American Historical Association’s prize for the year’s best book of American History when it was published in 2011. *Last Call *was a go-to book in the HTDS bibliography) for episodes 157-160 as we researched and selected the stories to tell in these four podcast episodes we’ve just completed.

Dan was also the first Public Editor of The New York Times, where he was charged with being the public’s advocate for accurate and objective journalism by the paper. So Prof. Jackson couldn’t resist the opportunity to get his perspective on the state of news reporting today which, as astute HTDS listeners know, is often called the first draft of history. Spoiler alert: they both agree one must be a critical thinker when it comes to the potential bias of the news media one consumes – helpful tool here from AdFontes).

Dan Okrent is also author of The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America), and Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center), a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history. 

Before his tenure at the Times, Okrent spent 13 years at Time Inc., where he was successively editor of Life magazine; corporate editor of new media; and corporate editor-at-large. Earlier in his career, he worked extensively in book and magazine publishing in various editorial and executive positions. He has held fellowships at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (where he was, in addition, the Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer in 2009-2010).


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