Firebrands - by Gioia Diliberto (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Gioia Diliberto's fresh and timely take on the history of Prohibition focuses on four women who played central roles in promoting, enforcing, profiting from, and repealing the Eighteenth Amendment: Ella Boole, the head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union; Texas Guinan, a star of silent films and vaudeville who ran glitzy speakeasies; Mabel Walker Willebrandt, a genuine trailblazer tasked with enforcing Prohibition in the Department of Justice; and Pauline Sabin, a Chicago socialite who led the drive toward repeal. Cumulatively, Diliberto creates a varied and dynamic portrait of women in power, as both activists and institutionalists, in both politics and culture"--

Book Synopsis

Guaranteed to change how you picture Prohibition, this lively history turns the spotlight on four women in the immediate aftermath of winning the vote who played influential roles on all sides of the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments.

In the popular imagination, the story of Prohibition in America is a story of men and male violence, one full of federal agents fighting gangsters over the sale of moonshine. In contrast, Firebrands is the story of four Jazz Age dynamos--all women -who were forces behind the passage, the enforcement, the defiance, and, ultimately, the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. They battled each other directly, and they learned to marshal clout with cowed and hypocritical legislators, almost all of them men. Their clash over Prohibition stands as the first significant exercise of women's political power since women gained the right to vote, and their influence on the American political scene wouldn't be equaled for decades.

In Gioia Diliberto's fresh and timely take on this period of history, we meet Ella Boole, the stern and ambitious leader of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who campaigned fiercely to introduce Prohibition and fought desperately to keep it alive. We also meet Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the most powerful woman in America at the time, who served as the top federal prosecutor charged with enforcing Prohibition. Diliberto tells the story, too, of silent film star Texas Guinan, who ran New York speakeasies backed by the mob and showed that Prohibition was not only absurd but unenforceable. And, she follows Pauline Morton Sabin, a glamorous Manhattan aristocrat who belatedly recognized the cascading evil in Prohibition and mobilized the movement to kill it.

These women led their opposing forces of "Wets" and "Drys" across a teeming landscape of bootleggers, gangsters, federal agents, temperance fanatics, and cowardly politicians, many of them secret drunks. Building on the momentum of suffrage, they forged a path for the activists who followed during the great civil rights battles of the mid-twentieth century. Yet, they have been largely lost to history. In Firebrands, Diliberto finally gives these dynamic figures their due, creating a varied and dramatic portrait of women wielding power, in politics, society, and popular culture.

Review Quotes

"[A] lively history."-- "Free Beacon"

"A fascinating read that tells the story of four women living through the Prohibition era." --Senator Marsha Blackburn "Roll Call, Best Books of 2024"

"Diliberto's story of four women's activism in the early 20th century is well-researched, original, and refreshing, especially since this was a period, as the author points out, characterized by phenomena familiar today: 'craven politicians, fake news, and a Congress in the grip of a fanatical minority.'"-- "Wall Street Journal"

"In this action-packed tale, Diliberto successfully illustrates how four women with radically different backgrounds--a leader of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an actress running a speakeasy, the prosecutor charged with the enforcement of Prohibition, and an aristocrat--led the fight for their respective sides. In a book about an era synonymous with gangsters and flappers, readers will appreciate Diliberto's deep dive into these women's lives and her new take on women's roles during this time period. . . . Diliberto's writing style and the subject matter are likely to appeal to readers across genres."-- "Library Journal"

"A reminder that . . . the dynamic, capable women behind national movements are all too often written out of the history they help make."-- "Washington Independent Review of Books"

"Diliberto, the author of celebrated biographies and biographical fiction about women, examines Prohibition and its repeal through the lives of women who used their emergent emancipation to affect social and legal change. With culture wars raging, Diliberto's lively and cogent historical profiles are keenly relevant."-- "Booklist"

"Firebrands visits the Roaring Twenties and beyond, revealing how four women's efforts shaped the course of American history. . . . Set against a familiar backdrop of flappers and mobsters, Firebrands retells history anew, demonstrating the crucial contributions women made to a fascinating time in the US."-- "Foreword"


"Firebrands is that rarest of narratives--a true story packed with Hollywood-worthy characters that reads like a thriller. In Diliberto's hands, four titanic women of the Jazz Age not only collide in an epic battle for the soul of America, but become harbingers of our own lives and times. A masterpiece of storytelling and reporting that dances on nearly every page with the thrill of the dawning of new eras."--Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers and Rocket Men

"Diliberto is a masterful storyteller. In Firebrands, she brings into focus the lives of four fascinating and passionate women who joined the early twentieth-century fight for women's equality and the right to be recognized professionally and politically, regardless of their sex. The book reads like an action-packed political drama, full of big stakes and big personalities, but that doubles as a study of how women were radically redefining their roles both in public and private spaces in the wake of the nineteenth amendment."
--Ellen Wayland-Smith, author of The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America

"Gioia Diliberto's unconventional portrait of the Jazz Age shifts the spotlight away from flappers and femme fatales to the rebels and reformers who 'played politics like a man.' Firebrands shows how the Noble Experiment of Prohibition was driven by female ambition, sparking an era of women's political power that remains unmatched in American history."
--Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

About the Author

Gioia Diliberto is the author of four biographies, among them Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped, Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife, and A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams, as well as three novels and a play. As a journalist, Diliberto has contributed to many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Smithsonian, and Vanity Fair. She also teaches writing and has taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and DePaul and Northwestern Universities. She lives with her husband in Woodbury, Connecticut.