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As I’ve said in reviews before, the era of American Prohibition completely and utterly fascinates me for more reasons that I’d care to cite. Because I’ve had the good fortune to read so many of the scholarly efforts exploring this unique period in U.S. history, I’ve now been directed toward some of the books targeted at readers much younger than I � and I’m giving Karen Blumenthal’s BOOTLEG: MURDER, MOONSHINE, AND THE LAWLESS YEARS OF PROHIBITION an enthusiastic thumbs up.

It’s a quick read, briskly covering approximately 100 years of American background. How can that be given the fact that Prohibition itself only lasted 13 years? Well, Blumenthal rightly explores the decades that led up to this grand social experiment as there were several important events that culturally ‘set the stage� for a voting electorate to get behind such a daunting political achievement. That’s a reality many books leave out or only cover superficial; to her credit, Blumenthal embraces what effect Morris Sheppard, Carrie Nation, and a handful of important others had on society-at-large.

At a lean 130 pages, BOOTLEG clearly doesn’t fathom the depths of these events. Instead, Blumenthal keeps the target focused on young readers, choosing to present perhaps only the more colorful players that set America on the path to enacting the Eighteenth Amendment. In fact, the first half of her work concentrates on the formative incidents, leaving the second half free to investigate the people who made Prohibition what it was: bootlegger Bill McCoy, cultural pioneer Henry Ford, and (naturally) mobster Al Capone.

Because I have read so much of this subject matter, it would be easy to brush aside BOOTLEG and criticize its brevity. However, it’s precisely because I have read so much that I can attest to the book serving as one of the best functional explanations of how a nation got itself into such a predicament and what lengths they were forced to consider to get itself out of it. Sure, it’s a quick read � I took it all in in a single sitting of a few hours � but it was a great summation of why ‘The Roaring Twenties� properly earned the moniker.

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION POSSIBLE. Adults might not be fulfilled but young one and teens looking for a terrific book for a book report or to expand on what you’ve learned in class couldn’t do better than sharing a few hours with Karen Blumenthal’s BOOTLEG: MURDER, MOONSHINE, AND THE LAWLESS YEARS OF PROHIBITION. It’s a dynamic telling of a fairly dark era in America’s past.