"Using the life of Reverend Edward S. Shumaker as a lens through which to view how social issues can be shaped by religious faith, historian Jason S. Lantzer explores the relationship between religion and politics in American culture, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This enjoyable, well-researched biography contains extensive and informative notes, as well as a valuable bibliography that includes archives, primary and secondary sources, court cases, dissertations and theses, interviews and oral histories, manuscript collections, newspapers, pamphlets, and websites. Recommended for high school, college, and public libraries." —Catholic Library World"Lantzer takes a respectful approach to Shumaker, offering a unique contribution to a neglected subject in state history. . . . Lantzer's regional story show[s] that the debate over alcohol abuse didn't end with the repeal of Prohibition. It stays alive through the work of groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Alcoholics Anonymous." —Indystar"Prohibition is often dismissed as an unfortunate aberration in the American reform tradition, led by fanatics, and doomed to failure. Jason S. Lantzer seeks to correct this impression in a well-written and thoroughly documented study on the life and career of Edward S. Shumaker, state superintendent of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League from 1907 until his untimely death in 1929." —Indiana Magazine of History"Jason S. Lantzer's "Prohibition is Here to Stay" offers a detailed, local-level analysis of dry Protestant politics in action through an examination of the life and reform career of Edward S. Shumaker, a Methodist minister who achieved prominence and notoriety as the superintendent of the Indiana Anti Saloon League." —Church History"Prohibition is Here to Stay" is a biography of a pivotal figure in the Midwest's early twentieth century dry crusade. The Reverend S. Shumaker was a Methodist minister who spent his life in Indiana, a man who believed alcohol was a sin from a very young age . . . students of the prohibition movement will find it informative." —American Catholic Studies"Jason S. Lantzer's "Prohibition Is Here to Stay" is a fine examination of the life and work of Indiana's dry crusader, the Reverend Edward S. Shumaker. . . . Lantzer's exploration of the dry movement's legacy is the most interesting dimension of this work. As he points out, 'though Shumaker's reform was over, the culture that produced it was not.'" —Journal of American History"Lantzer aims to shed new light on the American prohibition movement. Among the issues he explores while discussing Shumaker's life and work are: how dry culture transformed itself from a reformist cause to a national crusade, how the Anti Saloon League functioned at local and state levels, how its message evolved over time, how white evangelical Protestant reformers reached out to other groups, how the rhetoric of inclusion came to be superseded by the more reactionary vision of the Ku Klux Klan, and how the dominant reform of the largest religious segment of American culture came to be repealed and considered a failure." —Research Book News"Presenting evidence that the prohibition movement in Indiana was not happenstance or abnormal, but rather an effect of the mainstream cultural currents of the era, "Prohibition Is Here to Stay" uses Indiana as a lens to further examine larger issues of America's transformation from a rural to an urban majority, as well as the consequent shift in cultural values and the repercussions of industrialization and foreign immigration. A thoughtful, well-researched and persuasively presented study, highly recommended especially for college library collections." —Midwest Book Review"Historian Jason Lantzer has defied the odds. He's authored a doctoral thesis that is readable, academically sound and pertinent to current events. Lantzer tells the story of Edward Shumaker, the most politically influential church pastor in Indiana history. Shumaker was a crusader against alcohol abuse, peaking in influence from World War I to the mid-1920s." —Indianapolis Star"Jason Lantzer's excellent biography of Edward Shumaker places one of America's most successful Prohibition crusaders in the very center of American religion and reform. Lantzer's careful research and thoughtful analysis sharply contradicts the tendency to see Prohibition as a mere sidebar to American history and opens our minds to the connections between political activism and religious faith." —James H. Madison, author of Slinging Doughnuts for the Boys: An American Woman in World War II
