The 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol around the country. It was intended to usher in a more healthy, moral, and efficient society. Nowhere was such reform needed more, proponents argued, than in New York City - and nowhere did Prohibition fail more spectacularly. "Dry Manhattan" is the first major work on Prohibition in nearly a quarter century, and the only full history of Prohibition in the era's most vibrant city.