The word “prohibition” tends to conjure up images of smoky basement speakeasies, dancing flappers, and hardened gangsters bootlegging whiskey. Such stereotypes, a prominent historian recently noted in the Washington Post, confirm that Americans’ “common understanding of the prohibition era is based more on folklore than fact.” Popular culture has given us a very strong, and very wrong, picture of what the period was like. Prohibition’s Greatest Myths: The Distilled Truth about...

A gangster who liked music too much. A nude skier. The power of Alaska matchmaking, Yoism, and birthday party magic. Twenty-one weird and comical tales from J. Robert Lennon, author of SEE YOU IN PARADISE and PIECES FOR THE LEFT HAND, paired with twenty-one surreal images by Lou Beach, author of 420 CHARACTERS

Unfairly given a dishonorable discharge from the army, Calvin Gray goes to Dallas, where he manages to win the trust of a jeweler and is able to sell a number of diamonds to the newly oil rich Briskows. He makes friends with the family and helps them adjust to their newly found riches. The Briskows, in turn, help him prove false the charges that caused his dismissal from the army.