The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect at midnight on January 17, 1920. For 13 years, until the ratification of the 21st Amendment in December 1933, the country was officially dry—but the legacy of the Prohibition Era is less its propriety and more its flamboyant underground drinking culture, a scene populated in the public imagination by daring bootleggers, classy speakeasies, hot jazz, and cool flappers. From a century of distance, the stories of the 1920s seem like tipsy tall tales: Could a national experiment in teetotaling…
