Discusses the temperance movement in American history, including important figures in the movement, the history of temperance, and the period of Prohibition in the United States.

Do ideas of war and enemies hold a people together? Is a culture of conflict too seductive not to be irresistible? These are the questions Cathy Malkasian explores in her second graphic novel,Temperance. Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering―and re-constructing―a society, Blessedbowl, that elevates him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionality, and enemies, convinced that war lurks just outside their walls. They have come to depend on Lester, their greatest war hero, to lead the charge once the Final Battle begins. Malkasian creates a densely textured social context, masterfully conveying the idiosyncratic physical domain with its spiraling structures and quasi-medieval architecture along with intimate yet plastic portraits of her characters in a rich, tonal pencil line. Temperance is a galvanizing work of empathy and violence by one of today’s the most thoughtful and accomplished cartoonists.

At the end of this book, you should be able to explain the temperance movement and the role of the reformers in the mid-1800s. Why did the temperance reformers think that people should drink less alcohol? Further, why did some of them even advocated that alcoholic beverages should be completely outlawed? Was the reasoning behind these logical? Start reading to know the answers.

It's June in Montreal, and Tempe Brennan, Quebec's director of forensic anthropology, knows she is trailing a serial murderer when a dismembered and stored body turns up in a downtown park.