Strategies for gradually effecting social change are often dismissed as too accommodating of the status quo. Ann-Marie E. Szymanski challenges this assumption, arguing that moderation is sometimes the most effective way to achieve change. "Pathways to Prohibition" examines the strategic choices of social movements by focusing on the fates of two temperance campaigns. The prohibitionists of the 1880s gained limited success, while their Progressive Era counterparts achieved a remarkable--albeit temporary--accomplishment in American politics: amending the United States Constitution. Szymanski...

Szymanski uses the Prohibition movement as an example of the challenges facinbg all social reform movements.