Dry Manhattan Prohibition In New York City Summary

From reading Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City by Michael Lerner, I discovered a thorough account of prohibition in New York City. Michael Lerner made a convincing case that as we consider popular depictions of the “Roaring Twenties,” we are likely to find entertainment to the governmental attempts that tried to keep America from drinking. Prohibition defined how much the government might try to reform its citizens, and it defined the politics of the times. There is no understanding, for instance, how New Yorker, Franklin D. Roosevelt became president without taking prohibition into account. Lerner’s book, a well referenced and compellingly written account of a national mistake, fittingly concentrates on New York, for Prohibition failed there in a spectacular fashion because of the cultural makeup of the city, and its attitude toward being told what to do. However, the illegality surrounding the drinking culture of New York City conferred classiness to it, and drinking became a mark of social status in 1920’s Manhattan. Pre-prohibition drinking holes lacked urban sophistication, but post-prohibition nightclubs defined it. Lerner is masterful in describing prohibition’s cultural blowback. Another interesting

In comparison to Dry Manhattan, New Jack City is a modern example of how New York was center stage of many different controversial issues. New Jack City is a modern gangster thriller about the crack cocaine trade in contemporary Manhattan. A criminal businessman with no room for pity or emotion, the flashy but severe Nino Brown has built an empire and transformed an abandoned Harlem apartment building into a well-defended fortress. He begins to consider himself invincible, but his lust for power and the unpredictable actions of a former client turned police informer threaten to bring about his potential