Prohibition attempted to kill John Barleycorn, the personification of intoxicating drinks, but in Delaware the notice of his death was premature. Government agents tried in vain to stop bootleggers and rumrunners, who fed the speakeasies that quenched the thirst of the people of the First State. Against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, bootleggers sped up and down the new Du Pont Boulevard, while enforcement agents, such as the Bible-thumping "Three Gun" Wilson, tried in vain to stop them. The stock market crash and the Great Depression ended dry laws and brought about the resurrection of Barleycorn. Local author Michael Morgan recounts the dramatic tales of this unique period of Delaware history.

With its proximity to Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore, Cape May County was a perfect location for lawbreakers during Prohibition. Rumrunners operating along the Atlantic Seaboard and Delaware Bay teamed up with backwoods bootleggers to make Cape May County a bustling center of the era's illegal liquor business. It seemed as if every house around Otten's Harbor in Wildwood was a speakeasy. Bill McCoy would sail from the Caribbean to Jersey with undiluted rum, gaining praise as the "real McCoy." When authorities eventually shut down Cape May's Rum Row, the production of Jersey Lightning just moved to the Pine Barrens. Local historian Raymond Rebmann reveals how Cape May County turned from a sleepy beach community to a smuggler's paradise in the 1920s.

Take a journey through crime and vice in twentieth-century Wilmington, from a Tatnall Street bawdy house to the corporate boardrooms of the DuPont Company. Visit the old New Castle County Workhouse, scene of a break-in by a lynch mob and the daring escape of a notorious murderer. A police chief trying to keep his corrupt practices under wraps, agents raiding political headquarters and a detective murdered on the street were all part of city life in the early twentieth century. In later years, stories of a professional killer pleading self-defense, hiding his connections to a mobbed-up Teamsters boss, and runaway lovers caught up in an international extortion scheme show the city's darker side. Local historian Kevin McGonegal chronicles tales of Wilmington's infamous past.

Celebrate the 26th anniversary of the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery with this rich, adventurous history The Dogfish Head Book: 26 Years of Off-Centered Adventures celebrates a quarter-century in business for the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Over the past 26 years, the Dogfish Head founders have learned timeless lessons about working and living. This book shares their hard-earned insights and helps readers navigate life’s adventures. Through its colorful design and photos, The Dogfish Head Book brings the brewing business to life. Inside, you’ll find wisdom and entertainment in the form of memorabilia, photos, and the Dogfish Head Rules of Thumb. Food and beer lovers, entrepreneurs, and business professionals alike will enjoy this unique book, which also makes a perfect gift for any Dogfish Head fan or craft beer enthusiast. Since its start in 1995, Dogfish Head has grown exponentially to become one of the most celebrated craft breweries in the United States. This book lets you tour the history of the iconic brand without leaving home. Recounts the rich history of the Dogfish Head Brewery and Distillery Explores the founders’ unique and successful business philosophy Reveals new details about the future of this fast-growing brewery Celebrates the 26th anniversary of Dogfish Head Paired nicely with any Dogfish Head beer, The Dogfish Head Book: 26 Years of Off-Centered Adventures is a living guide to business and life—the Dogfish way!

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible—if long-forgotten—federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent’s account of Joseph P. Kennedy’s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It’s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent’s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing “sacramental” wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American writer.