Richard F. Hamm
University at Albany -- SUNY
 
 
        I have been working in the field of temperance history for about 15
years now.  My interest is primarily in legal history.  My monograph,
Shaping the 18th Amendment:  Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the
Polity, 1880-1920 has just been published for the Legal History Series by
University of North Carolina Press.  It is available in paper.  Picking up
on David Fahey's suggestion, I will summarize it by quoting the back jacket
"Most scholarship on prohibition focuses on its social context, but Hamm
explores how the regulation of commerce and the federal tax structure
molded the drys crusade.  He shows that interaction with the federal . . .
system helped to reshape prohibitionists'' legal culture -- that is, their
ideas about what law was and how it could be used."  Beyond that "Because
the prohibition movement was a quintessential reform effort, Hamm uses it
as a case study to advance a general theory about interaction between
progressive reformers and the state during" the period.
        I have been Executive Secretary of Alcohol and Temperance Group for
about two years and a member for at least a dozen.  If you wish to join the
group, say so in this forum and I will send you the requisite materials.
Subscription information follows.  Currently North American members pay
US$15, members in other countries US$20, and institutions and libraries
US$20.  Back copies of the SHAR and its predecessor newsletters are
available. For new members we will begin your subscription to the Social
History of Alcohol Review with issue 30.  While I am writing let me correct
the my phone address, previously posted.  The proper number is 518
442-4888, this rings right to my desk, or if I am not there, right to my
voice mail.
 
 
Richard F. Hamm
History Department
Ten Broeck 105
University at Albany, Suny
Albany, NY 12222
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