Thaddeus Russell – A Renegade History of the United States

“…Italian American gangsters were the frontline troops in the war against Prohibition. Quite possibly a majority of the bottles consumed illegally in the United States at one point passed through the hands of a member of an Italian crime syndicate. Even Italian women fought on the home front in the good war.”

Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States: How Drunks, Delinquents and Other Outcasts Made America (London: Simon & Schuster, 2011 [2010]), p. 189.