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Sometimes I geek out over a book and wonder how I could have ever repressed my social science background. Reading this book has occasioned one of those epiphanies. I've referenced details from Bootleg at least three times since I started reading it a few days ago and had to pull myself away from Al "Scarface" Capone's Wikipedia page (Yes, I use Wikipedia if I am simply satisfying my own guilty pleasures).

Of course, with the long discussion of the temperance movement before you get to any real details about gangsters and speakeasies, I'm not sure how many teens would take an equal amount of glee in the reading. However, they do jazz it up with descriptions of the crazy-pants women who smashed up saloons in their quest to rid the world of the evils of alcohol. Parents might object to giving a book devoted to alcohol to their kids, but you could probably argue about how it also highlights some of the dangers of alcohol as well as romanticizing the flappers. Plus, Al Capone died of advanced SYPHILIS which is a testament to keeping it in your pants. Win-win, conservative parents. Win-win.