Formats: ePub, Mobi, LIT

The idea for Last Call arose from my research, back in the 1990's, for Great
Fortune, my history of Rockefeller Center, published in 2003. To assemble the
property on which the Center was built, John D. Rockefeller Jr. had to acquire
the ground leases on 228 buildings, mostly decrepit row houses, between Fifth
and Sixth Avenues -- the heart of what was Manhattan's speakeasy district.
Looking through city records, I found the Rockefeller agents tangling with
various speakeasy owners -- and it turned out that many of them had more
political clout than the Rockefellers.

This is the sort of thing that gets a book started. What gave it fuel was
the continual revelations that popped up in my research. I knew that much of
the Prohibition movement was religiously motivated -- but I hadn't known that
the allies of the era's "religious right" included large segments of the women's
suffrage campaign, the Progressive Party, and other reform movements. I knew that
drinking continued during Prohibition -- but I hadn't known that much of it was
sanctioned by the Volstead Act, in the form of "medicinal liquor" (doctors sold
prescriptions for three bucks each), "sacramental wine" (which, in some instances,
was stretched to include sacramental brandy and Champagne), and "preserved fruit"
(aka hard cider and applejack). I knew that crime was rampant in the 1920's --
but I hadn't known that trans-national organized crime was the direct consequence
of Prohibition, which required the cooperation of criminal syndicates in many
cities because of the complications of shipping millions of gallons of liquor from
place to place.

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