General readers, history buffs, historians, and fans of true-crime stories will enjoy Bootleggers and Beer Barons because it is an accurate, wide-ranging, and entertaining account of the illegal liquor traffic during the Volstead Era (1920-1933). Based on FBI files, legal documents, old newspapers, and other sources, the author offers a coast-to-coast survey of Volstead crime. Bootleggers and Beer Barons tells the outrageous stories of America's most notorious liquor lords, including those who made headlines during Prohibition but are little remembered today. Readers will find the lesser known Volstead outlaws to be fascinating as their most famous counterparts. The stories of Max Hassel, Waxy Gordon, Roy Olmstead, Pat Thomas, George Cassiday, and Max "Boo Boo" Hoff are riveting tales that will be new to most readers. Likewise, the exploits of women bootleggers and flying bootleggers are unknown to most Americans. Bootleggers and Beer Barons will attract readers in Canada as well as in the United States. Books about Volstead crime usually note that Canadian liquor exporters abetted the U.S. bootleggers, but they fail to go into detail. Bootleggers and Beer Barons examines the major cross-border routes for smuggling liquor from Canada into the USA: Quebec to Vermont and New York, Ontario to Michigan, Saskatchewan to Montana, and British Columbia to the State of Washington.