The striking installation of ceramic works at Nonaka-Hill makes Keita Matsunaga’s interest in architecture immediately apparent. The artist has set his sculptures on shelves at different heights within a metal scaffold, playing their hand-built organic forms and earthen surfaces against the structure’s angularity and uniform industrial material.

That binary opposition, visually arresting as it is, ultimately gives way to a deeper, even more provocative conversation between the two fields that Matsunaga has worked in and studied. His ceramic sculptures engage the same fundamentals as architecture: site, function and the shaping of space. The works in his first U.S. show are enrapturing.

Most within the large installation resemble pods or husks, some small enough to rest in the hand, others more than 2 feet wide. The walls of the vessels curl together but do not seal, leaving irregular openings to the dark voids within, and giving the impression of objects emptied, spent.

Surfaces are richly varied — some humble, muted in tone and rugged; others smooth and vibrantly color-saturated. Matsunaga uses glazes, photo decals, discarded ceramic rubble and urushi (sap from the lacquer tree) to create textures and effects that blur the boundary between tradition and invention.

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The work here is made with with acute sensitivity to place. In one case, clays sourced from different locales are layered, their different compositions yielding a stunning surface with fine vertical fissures like woodgrain cracked open by fire.

The ceramics-making area of Tajimi, Japan, where Matsunaga lives, and the Center for Contemporary Ceramics at Cal State Long Beach, where he recently spent a month in residence, both assert themselves — visually and materially — in astonishing ways. Photographs of one locale become the skin for an object made in the other; discards become repurposed, honored as generative. Photographs made near Matsunaga’s Japanese studio are printed on rolls of vinyl that hang from the metal scaffold and scroll to the floor, where they serve as background context to the sculptures on view as well as physical foundation for several pieces placed upon them.

Matsunaga marries material, concept, form, process and representation with unusual vigor. The vertical stripes on one solid upright monochrome piece are actually a photographic image of the light and shadow on a corrugated wall. One pod-like work looks delicately inked with indigo lines, but the veins are actually photo-decals of one cracked vessel, fused to another.

The self-referencing and cross-referencing operate on multiple levels at once, captivating the eye, electrifying the mind and rousing the body to a heightened awareness of space.

Even the most fervent fans — and they are legion — might not recall that “Rock of Ages,” the stage musical that takes place inside a Hollywood nightclub, first premiered inside a Hollywood nightclub. A 30-minute version played six nights at King King in 2005 — with Chris Hardwick, Dan Finnerty and Laura Bell Bundy head-banging with an onstage band — and proved that “Don’t Stop Believin’” works as well as the finale of a theatrical show as it does in the set list of a Journey concert.

A full production then premiered at the Vanguard down Hollywood Boulevard. “This show is for all of us who still find ourselves lip-syncing down the supermarket aisles to Pat Benatar or sneaking Foreigner onto our iPods,” wrote Times theater critic Charles McNulty in 2006. “The production may not improve the malingering state of the American musical, but it certainly creates a spectacle that shamelessly conveys the essence of what made the ’80s, for better or worse, unforgettable.”

The irreverent burst of nostalgia — touting classic rock hits from Whitesnake, Styx and REO Speedwagon — eventually made its way to Broadway, where it nabbed five Tony Award nominations and played for more than five years. Its complimentary toy lighters took over theaters in Toronto, Las Vegas and London’s West End. The juggernaut rolled to Australia, Asia and South America. Fans were able to sing along to the hair-metal musical while vacationing on a cruise or watching the 2012 big-screen adaptation starring Tom Cruise.

Fifteen years after it started, “Rock of Ages” is attempting to defy the odds once again — by returning to a Hollywood nightclub. Rather than programming into an existing theater’s season or renting a venue for a limited run, producers have taken the rare step of signing a 10-year lease for a second-story Hollywood Boulevard space. If successful, the blueprint will become a template for semi-immersive “Rock of Ages” stagings across the country.

The Bourbon Room, the fictional hotspot facing demolition in “Rock of Ages,” is now a real, functioning bar that houses the musical’s 20th production — a homecoming that officially opens Wednesday. This time, Broadway “Rock” director Kristin Hanggi has staged the action all around the audience of 250 people. As the band plays on the wide stage, the actors saunter through aisles of tables and chairs, and sing from a platform in the middle of the space.

“When we were on Broadway, I always felt like the audience wanted so badly to be onstage with us — there’s so much singing along and call-and-response already — but there was always a proscenium separating the actors from the audience,” Frankie Grande, who reprises his role as Franz in Los Angeles, told The Times.

“And I think it’ll attract a new flock of theatergoers who maybe don’t want to sit in a dark theater and just face forward for two-and-a-half hours,” he said. “In our society nowadays, we’re so used to being overstimulated and oversaturated, so the attention span of the audience member has truly decreased in the past several years. At our show, there’s an entrance behind us? Someone is dancing on our table? This is a way to keep things fresh and engaging, and can serve other productions well.”

Producers are betting on revenue not just from ticket sales ($89 to $129 a pop) but also from the bar that lies beyond the performance area, serving a full dinner menu and craft cocktails including a special “Rock of Ages” bourbon from Maker’s Mark. This is a key move for a musical whose signature in-seat drink service, back in a time when Broadway theaters rarely sold alcohol, contributed to its popularity.

“We had seen jukebox shows before, but that music just drew in a huge beer-drinking, vodka-cranberry, stadium kind of crowd,” recalled Tom Davies, then the manager of operations at the Nederlander theater organization. Before “Rock of Ages,” the Brooks Atkinson Theatre — one of Broadway’s smaller houses, with slightly more than 1,000 seats — would pull in about $3,000 per week in concessions. “You’re only selling for 40 minutes: 20 minutes before the show and 20 minutes at intermission,” Davies said.

But because the ’80s fans who attended “Rock of Ages” came ready to drink, and runners served cocktails during scenes, the theater averaged $4,000 in concessions per performance, double that on its best nights.

“It showed theater owners that these drinks can be a huge profit on Broadway,” said Davies, who helped Nederlander implement similar strategies at other houses.

Concessions profits, however, line the pockets of the theater owner, while show producers come up empty-handed.

“From a business standpoint, owning and controlling the liquor is a huge, huge part of this,” said producer Matthew Weaver, explaining why the show “Rock of Ages” will open with its own bar in L.A.

The Bourbon Room opens two hours before curtain, remains open throughout the show and keeps pouring long after it’s over. Designed by Built Inc.’s John Sofio (also behind the Peppermint Club, Bootsy Bellows and Employees Only), the venue is decorated in brick, leather and light wood. A retro record store sells show souvenirs, and a faux-tattoo chair offers patrons shots of bourbon with any temporary markings. Actors from the immersive theater company After Hours casually play characters that might have inhabited the same world as those in “Rock of Ages,” improvising with patrons before they even see a stage. (Weaver declined to reveal the investment needed to make this vision a reality.)

“The state of entertainment right now is like this: People don’t go to the movies unless it’s a tent-pole movie, and their houses are now like mini movie theaters with great sound systems and big screens and the ability to stream such great shows with wonderful writing,” director Hanggi said. “So we’re trying to play with what’s possible with live performance: what if, from the moment you walk in the door, you’re already part of this world? And what if you can still hang out there after the curtain call?

“We’re offering a cornucopia of experiences for people to enjoy, whichever way they want. If you want to come and drink with your friends, great. If you want to play some immersive games before the show, cool. If you want to sit with your family and have dinner during the show, awesome. If you want to stand up and sing along like you’re at a concert, you can have that too. It’s giving people a lot of different, individual ways to participate in this communal thing.”

Access to the Bourbon Room and its activities doesn’t require a ticket. When the show is dark, the space may host intimate concerts, film screenings and other events. Standalone, speakeasy-esque bars, like a small room resembling the office of fictional Bourbon Room owner Dennis Dupree, and a vintage limousine parked in the alleyway outside, are among the future additions that will be available for private parties.

“We’re really trying to tread this line between fun, loose, experiential, but that you don’t feel like you’re at the wax museum down the street,” joked Weaver. “You’re going to come to ‘Rock of Ages’ and have a great time, yes. But I want you to have that same experience when you come back to the Bourbon Room, and I want you to come back to the Bourbon Room five or six times over the course of a year.”

The producers are ambitiously attempting to open a performance venue and a nightlife venue at the same time, and it hasn’t gone without its hiccups. Trying to turn an old Hollywood building into a theater has required installing a high-quality sound system, building adequate dressing rooms, soundproofing the stage space, and figuring out safety measures, especially since scantily-clad actresses occasionally play strippers for a potentially inebriated audience. (Producers note that two security officers will be watching for inappropriate audience behavior.)

Adding in a culinary component — and the city permit that requires — has complicated the entire operation, which was scheduled to open in October (and then November, and then December). But Weaver has plans to replicate this blueprint in Nashville, Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, either with “Rock of Ages” or other existing musicals with transportive settings.

“I hope the community gets behind it in the way it should,” said Nick Cordero, the Tony nominee who plays Dennis. “This is a brand new and exciting way to see this show, even if you’ve seen it before. And with everything else going on in here, I can imagine that this is really gonna be a shot of adrenaline in the arm of the theater scene here.”

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The Skirball Cultural Center, one of the nation’s largest Jewish cultural institutions, will announce Wednesday that founding President and Chief Executive Uri D. Herscher will retire this summer and will be succeeded by L.A. civil rights attorney Jessie Kornberg.

Herscher has led the Skirball since its inception in the 1980s and public opening in 1996. In a 1996 interview with The Times, Herscher said he envisioned the Skirball as a place where divergent ethnic groups could convene. Under his leadership, the Skirball has grown to see more than 600,000 people each year.

Herscher called his years at the Skirball a “remarkable, fulfilling journey.” And at 78, he hopes to end his tenure “in good health with ample strength.”

Citing the spirit of Jewish tradition, Herscher said “it’s time for me to do as my mentors and teachers have done before me and that is to pass the baton to a new generation of leadership.”

Herscher was a mentor to Kornberg, 37, whom he met about five years ago.

“I was immediately struck by her intellect, her character, her vigor and her regard and respect for her own family history and ancestry, which includes the immigrant experience,” Herscher said. “Most of all, her commitment to pursuing social justice.”

Kornberg will begin her tenure July 1. Since 2014 she has led the L.A. nonprofit public-interest law firm Bet Tzedek, which provides free legal services to low-income individuals and families. During Kornberg’s tenure as president and chief executive, the law firm established a transgender medical-legal partnership and a family preparedness program responding to the deportation of undocumented parents.

Previously, she worked as a trial attorney at an L.A.-based law firm handling civil and white collar criminal litigation. There she chaired the firm’s pro bono program. Kornberg earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law.

Kornberg said she was grateful for the opportunity to transition from law to the arts.

“It was hard to imagine what would feel as important and significant and meaningful to me as the work I’m currently doing,” she said. “But when Uri approached me about the opportunity to succeed him at the Skirball, it was the first time that something stirred those same reactions for me.”

Kornberg said the Skirball’s mission, guided by American values and the Jewish tradition of “welcoming the stranger,” is “personally relevant.”

Welcoming diverse groups of people through cultural programming is exciting, she said. “Having more people from different backgrounds feel they belong together is the most exciting thing about the Skirball’s work.”

As president and CEO of the Skirball, Kornberg plans to draw from her legal experience to create a gathering for people “who think about migration and immigration — both from an arts and culture perspective but also from a civic engagement perspective.”

Herscher hopes Kornberg can expand the institution’s vision. “I wish her to apply her own lenses on the world as she sees it,” he said, “and make sure that our programs remain vital and relevant to generations yet to come.”

Indonesia’s Lion Air considered putting its pilots through simulator training before flying the Boeing Co. 737 Max but abandoned the idea after the plane maker convinced them in 2017 it was unnecessary, according to people familiar with the matter and internal company communications.

The next year, 189 people died when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea, a disaster blamed in part on inadequate training and the crew’s unfamiliarity with a new flight-control feature on the Max that malfunctioned.

Boeing employees had expressed alarm among themselves over the possibility that one of the company’s largest customers might require its pilots to undergo costly simulator training before flying the new 737 model, according to internal messages that have been released to the media. Those messages, included in the more than 100 pages of internal Boeing communications that the company provided to lawmakers and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and released widely on Thursday, had Lion Air’s name redacted.

But the the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee provided excerpts of those messages to Bloomberg News that unredacted the Indonesian carrier’s name.

“Now friggin Lion Air might need a sim to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity. I’m scrambling trying to figure out how to unscrew this now! idiots,” one Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 text messages obtained by the company and released by the House committee.

In response, a Boeing colleague replied: “WHAT THE [ … ] !!!! But their sister airline is already flying it!” That was an apparent reference to Malindo Air, the Malaysian-based carrier that was the first to fly the Max commercially.

Doing simulator training would have undercut a critical selling point of the jet: that airlines would be able to allow crews trained on an older 737 version to fly the Max after just a brief computer course.

In a report on the Oct. 29, 2018, accident, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee cited a failure by Boeing to tell pilots about the new flight-control feature on the jet, called MCAS, and the need to provide training on it so that pilots would be able to better respond to malfunctions.

The report also cited shortfalls in the crew’s ability to perform emergency checklists, fly the plane manually and communicate about the emergency. The copilot, who took nearly four minutes to look up an emergency procedure he was supposed to have memorized, was singled out for repeated failures during training.

The 737 Max was grounded worldwide last March after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed following a similar MCAS malfunction.

To be sure, simulator training that didn’t address a malfunction of the system like the one crews in both disasters encountered might not have saved the jets. Separate decisions had been made not to inform pilots about MCAS, something that has drawn sharp criticism from pilots’ unions in the U.S.

But the prospect of simulator training for Max pilots — and opposition to it within Boeing — were major themes in the latest batch of embarrassing internal company messages released last week.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that is investigating the 737 Max, said the probe has found “more and more evidence of how far Boeing was willing to go in order to essentially cloak MCAS in secrecy from Max pilots while also downplaying the information it shared about MCAS with federal regulators. That’s incredibly damning, and is opposite of Boeing’s repeated insistence that safety drives its decisions.”

Lion Air has declined to comment about whether it was the carrier discussed in the messages released last week by Boeing, but people familiar with the exchanges, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter, said Lion Air had initially raised concerns about the need for simulator training on the Max but ultimately accepted Boeing’s recommendation that it was unnecessary.

Some of the messages revealed the pressure on employees — and customers — to avoid the additional training. Boeing’s resistance to simulator training for Lion Air pilots was reported earlier by Forbes.

Boeing didn’t respond to a request for comment but said last week that “any potential safety deficiencies identified in the documents have been addressed.”

“These documents do not represent the best of Boeing,” Greg Smith, the company’s interim chief executive, said in a message to employees Friday. “The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate, particularly when used in discussion of such important matters, and they do not reflect who we are as a company or the culture we’ve created.”

The communications include a 2017 email from Boeing’s chief technical pilot on the 737 in which he crowed to colleagues: “Looks like my jedi mind trick worked again!” The email was sent two days after the earlier messages expressing alarm about Lion Air potentially demanding simulator training.

Attached was a forwarded email exchange in which the person warned an unnamed recipient against offering simulator training for Max pilots, pushing instead for the computer-based course that regulators had already approved for flight crews transitioning to the Max from earlier 737 models.

“I am concerned that if [redacted] chooses to require a Max simulator for its pilots beyond what all other regulators are requiring that it will be creating a difficult and unnecessary training burden for your airline, as well as potentially establish a precedent in your region for other Max customers,” the Boeing pilot wrote in the forwarded message.

While Lion Air was not identified in the redacted emails, the discussions are consistent with those Boeing held with Lion Air at the time, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The story always comes back to the same thing: that Boeing was advancing the sale of this plane to capture market share, to capture the profits and cash flow that goes with it, and safety was treated as something that would occur without a great deal of focus,” said Robert Clifford, a Chicago lawyer who has sued Boeing on behalf of victims of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. “That’s just never the case in engineering.”

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Major U.S. stock indexes closed mixed Tuesday, shedding most of their gains from earlier in the day, after a published report revealed that an interim trade deal between the U.S. and China does not remove tariffs on Chinese goods.

The benchmark S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite finished slightly off their record highs from a day earlier. The S&P 500 index fell 4.98 points, or 0.2%, to 3,283.15. The index had been up as much as 0.2% earlier. The Nasdaq slid 22.60 points, or 0.2%, to 9,251.33. The Dow rose 32.62 points, or 0.1%, to 28,939.67.

The market’s late-afternoon burst of selling came a day before the U.S. and China were due to sign a preliminary trade agreement in Washington. Optimism that the deal would bring the two economic powerhouses closer to ending the dispute threatening global economic growth has helped drive markets higher for weeks.

Still, reports suggesting that U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods will remain in place until at least after this year’s election appeared to dim some investors’ enthusiasm over the deal.

“Would the market be more satisfied with a reduction in those tariffs? Absolutely,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “Nonetheless, you don’t want to have an escalation in the tariff war. That was the most important thing for the market.”

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 1.81% from 1.84% late Monday.

President Trump and China’s chief negotiator, Liu He, are scheduled to sign a modest trade agreement Wednesday that calls for the U.S. to ease some sanctions on China. The U.S. dropped its designation of China as a currency manipulator in advance of the signing. Beijing, meanwhile, will step up its purchases of U.S. farm products and other goods.

With the trade issue entering a new stage, Wall Street is focusing on the rollout of corporate earnings reports over the next few weeks.

Several large banks were among the companies that kicked off the latest earnings season on Wall Street Tuesday. JPMorgan Chase rose 1.2% after the banking giant reported a surge in profits because of a blowout quarter from its trading desks. Wells Fargo did not fare as well. The bank’s stock slumped 5.4% as its profit and revenue dropped because of hefty costs and lower interest rates.

Delta Air Lines rose 3.3% after the company increased its fourth-quarter profit to $1.1 billion by adding more flights over the holiday period and packing them even more full of passengers.

Wall Street expects corporate profits for S&P 500 companies in the last three months of 2019 to be down by 2%. That would be the first time that earnings for the S&P 500 would have declined four quarters in a row since the period ending in mid-2016, according to FactSet.

Companies typically outperform forecasts and temper expectations for sharp declines by the time the bulk of financial reporting is done. Investors are more likely to focus on what management teams’ outlooks, especially with the prospect of less uncertainty over the U.S.-China trade dispute.

“What we want to hear is what companies are seeing from their own customers, what are they hearing?” said Krosby. “And are they more optimistic going into 2020?”

Nvidia led Tuesday’s slide in technology stocks. The chipmaker dropped 1.9%. Healthcare stocks led the gainers, receiving a big boost from Perrigo, which vaulted 12.6%. GameStop skidded 13.3% after the video game retail chain reported holiday sales that fell below expectations, partly due to lower demand for software and hardware.

Benchmark crude oil rose 15 cents to settle at $58.23 a barrel. Brent crude oil, the international standard, gained 29 cents to close at $64.49 a barrel.

Gold fell $6.00 to $1,542.40 per ounce and silver fell 25 cents to $17.67 per ounce.

The dollar rose to 110.00 Japanese yen from 109.93 yen on Monday. The euro weakened to $1.1128 from $1.1138.

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PG&E Corp. is nearing a deal with a group of bondholders led by Pacific Investment Management Co. and Elliott Management Corp. that would entitle them to a mix of equity and new debt if they scrap their rival restructuring plan, people familiar with the matter said.

The California power giant announced a potential deal at the start of a Bankruptcy Court hearing on Tuesday that had been delayed twice as the two sides talked. When court began an hour late, PG&E lawyer Stephen Karotkin told the federal judge overseeing the reorganization that the company and bondholders were in “constructive negotiations.”

Karotkin didn’t provide any details about what an agreement would include. A deal hasn’t yet been struck and the talks may still break off, the people said, asking not to be identified because the talks are private.

PG&E said in a statement that it has been holding discussions with stakeholders on its reorganization and hopes “to make progress over the next week.” A representative for the bondholders didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shares of PG&E surged 7.7% after hours to $11.92, after gaining as much as 11% during the session. Some of its longer-dated bonds also jumped, including the 5.8% unsecured notes maturing in 2037, which rose 2.5 cents on the dollar to 112.25.

A deal with bondholders would leave California Gov. Gavin Newsom as the last major obstacle to PG&E’s plan for getting out of bankruptcy. The company has been trying for months to craft a proposal that would keep shareholders from being wiped out while paying $13.5 billion to wildfire victims, who blame the utility for sparking the blazes that caused their losses.

The state has set a deadline of June 30 for the utility to win court approval of its reorganization if it wants to participate in an insurance fund that would shield it from future catastrophic wildfire losses.

Under the deal being negotiated, the bondholders’ investment in the company would replace some of the exit financing that PG&E is proposing as part of its restructuring, the people said. Bonds paying less than 5% interest would be reinstated as part of the agreement being hammered out, and those above 5% would be revised to 4.75% through a mix of 10-year and 30-year bonds, they said.

One of the biggest of PG&E’s bond issues also carries one of the highest interest rates: $3 billion of unsecured notes due in 2034 that pay 6.05%.

The creditors would be given the right to participate in the company’s financial backstop commitments, a move that could hand them a part of the equity financing in the deal, the people said.

The two sides were in court to make final arguments about the current bankruptcy exit plan, which would refinance the company’s $17.5-billion bond load. Much of that debt carries higher-than-market interest rates.

Bondholders maintain the proposal would trigger a customary “make-whole payment” to compensate for the interest income they were promised in future years. PG&E says that being bankrupt voids any such assurances made in its debt contracts.

The bankruptcy case is PG&E Corp. 19-bk-30088, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

Deveau and Church write for Bloomberg.

Americans are drinking more now than when Prohibition was enacted — a trend that’s been rising for two decades with no clear end in sight.

That’s the picture painted by federal health statistics, which show increases in per-capita alcohol consumption and emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths tied to drinking.

The statistics aren’t all bad, however. Drinking among teenagers is down. And there are signs that some people are taking alcohol seriously — such as the “Dry January” movement making the rounds on social media.

But overall, public health experts say America still has a drinking problem.

“Consumption has been going up. Harms [from alcohol] have been going up,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, an alcohol researcher at Boston University. “And there’s not been a policy response to match it.”

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In the late 1910s, just before Congress banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, each American teen and adult was downing just under two gallons of alcohol a year, on average.

These days it’s about 2.3 gallons, according to federal calculations. That works out to nearly 500 drinks, or about nine per week.

Historians say drinking was heaviest in the early 1800s, with estimates that the average U.S. adult downed the equivalent of seven gallons a year in 1830.

Drinking waned as the temperance movement pushed for moderation, abstinence and, later, a national ban. Congress passed the 18th Amendment in 1919, and Prohibition went into effect on Jan. 17, 1920 — 100 years ago this Friday. It lasted 13 years.

In 1934, a year after Prohibition was repealed, per-capita alcohol consumption was under one gallon, and it’s been up and down since then. The apex was a heavy-drinking spell in the 1970s and 1980s, when U.S. per-person consumption was 2.75 gallons.

It fell in the mid-1980s, amid growing attention to deaths from drunken driving and after Congress passed a law raising the drinking age to 21. But it began climbing again in the mid-1990s.

“I think people sort of forgot all the problems” with alcohol,” said William Kerr, senior scientist at the California-based Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group.

Excessive drinking is associated with chronic dangers such as liver cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Drinking during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth or birth defects. Health officials say alcohol is a factor in as many as one-third of serious falls among the elderly.

It’s also a risk to others — through drunken driving or alcohol-fueled violence.

More than 88,000 Americans die each year as a result of excessive drinking, a figure higher than the opioid-related deaths seen in a current drug overdose epidemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This month, researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism released a lower figure for alcohol-related deaths. They scanned death certificates over two decades to search for mention of alcohol and tallied a little under 73,000 in 2017. The researchers said death certificates can be incomplete, and their number is likely an undercount.

The more important finding, other researchers said, was that the number of alcohol-related deaths had doubled since 1999, and the death rate had risen 50%. Some or much of that may be related to the increasingly deadly drugs used in the overdose epidemic, since many people drink while taking drugs, said Aaron White, the study’s lead researcher.

About three-quarters of alcohol-related deaths are in men. But drinking among women — particularly binge drinking — has been a major driver of the increases in alcohol statistics.

White’s study found that the female death rate jumped 85%, while the male rate rose 39%. The highest alcohol-related death rates for women were among those ages 55 to 74, that research found. But increases were seen in younger women, too.

Binge drinking — consuming four to five drinks in a two-hour period — is rising most dramatically among women, other research has found.

Researchers say there’s been a change in cultural attitudes toward drinking. Internet memes popular with stressed-out moms call wine “mommy juice” and joke about it being “wine o’clock.”

Wine acquired a bit of a halo after some researchers observed that French people had lower rates of heart disease despite generally consuming high levels of saturated fat. This “French Paradox” triggered studies that suggested drinking a glass or two of red wine may have some benefits for heart health.

But increasingly, other researchers have poked holes in the hypothesis, arguing that lifestyle, diet and other factors probably deserve far more credit. After climbing for 24 years, U.S. wine consumption dipped last year, according to the research firm IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

“I think the halo has tilted or fallen off,” Naimi said.

“But,” he added, “for most people who drink alcohol, health is not their primary consideration.”

NEW YORK — 

In this era of bottomless mimosas, craft beers and ever-present happy hours, it’s striking to recall that 100 years ago the United States imposed a nationwide ban on the production and sale of all types of alcohol.

The Prohibition era, which lasted from Jan. 17, 1920, until December 1933, is now viewed as a failed experiment that glamorized illegal drinking, but there are several intriguing parallels in current times.

Americans are consuming more alcohol per capita now than in the time leading up to Prohibition, when alcohol opponents successfully made the case that excessive drinking was ruining family life. More states are also moving to decriminalize marijuana, with legalization backers frequently citing Prohibition’s failure. Many of the same speakeasy locations that operated in the 1920s are flourishing in a culture that romanticizes the era.

And in a time of heightened racial divisions, Prohibition offers a poignant history lesson on how the restrictions targeted blacks and recent immigrants more harshly than other communities. That treatment eventually propelled many of those marginalized Americans into the Democratic Party, which engineered Prohibition’s repeal.

”Prohibition had a lot of unintended consequences that backfired on the people who worked so hard to establish the law,” said Harvard history professor Lisa McGirr, whose 2015 book “The War on Alcohol” examines Prohibition’s political and social repercussions.

“It helped to activate and enfranchise men and women who had not been part of the political process earlier,” she said. “That was not the intention of Prohibition supporters.”

Ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which set the stage for Prohibition’s launch a year later, culminated a century of advocacy by the temperance movement. Leading forces included the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League and many Protestant denominations. Prohibition supporters assailed the impact of booze on families and the prominent role that saloons played in immigrant communities.

Prohibition greatly expanded federal law enforcement powers and turned millions of Americans into scofflaws. It provided a new revenue stream for organized crime.

By the time the constitutional amendment was ratified in January 1919, many states had enacted their own prohibition laws. That October, Congress passed a law detailing how the federal government would enforce Prohibition. It was known as the Volstead Act in recognition of its foremost champion, Rep. Andrew Volstead of Minnesota. The law banned the manufacture, sale and transportation of any “intoxicating liquor” — beverages with an alcohol content of more than 0.5%, including beer and wine.

Statistically, Prohibition was not an utter failure. Deaths from alcohol-related cirrhosis declined, as did arrests for public drunkenness.

What the statistics don’t measure is how extensively Prohibition was flouted. Bootleggers established vast distribution networks. Makers of moonshine and “bathtub gin” proliferated, sometimes producing fatally tainted liquor. Determined drinkers concealed their contraband in hip flasks or hollowed-out canes. Maryland refused to pass a law enforcing the Volstead Act.

McSorley’s Old Ale House, established in New York in 1854 and still flourishing as one of the city’s oldest bars, never closed during Prohibition. Ostensibly, it served “near beer” with permissibly low alcohol content, but in fact produced a strong ale from a makeshift brewery erected in the basement.

“It wasn’t a near beer. It was McSorley’s ale,” said the pub’s manager, Gregory de la Haba. “At least once a week, people ask what did we do during Prohibition? And my reply: ‘We made a ton of money.’”

The federal government, as well as state and local authorities, spent huge sums on enforcement yet never allocated sufficient resources to do the job effectively. Bootleggers awash in cash bribed judges, politicians and law enforcement officers to let their operations continue.

“Newly hired and poorly trained Prohibition agents, along with local and state police, targeted violators at the margins,” McGirr wrote in a recent article. “But they lacked the capacity, and at times the will, to go after powerful crime kingpins.”

It’s simplistic to say Prohibition created organized crime in America, but it fueled a huge expansion as local crime gangs collaborated with those from other regions to establish shipping systems and set prices for bootlegged alcohol. Beneficiaries included Chicago-based gangster Al Capone, who earned tens of millions of dollars annually from bootlegging and speakeasies. In the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, gunmen disguised as police officers killed seven men from a gang that sought to compete with Capone’s empire.

Beyond the ranks of gangsters, legions of Americans were committing or abetting crime. Michael Lerner, in his book “Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City,” says courtrooms and jails were so overwhelmed that judges began accepting plea bargains, “making it a common practice in American jurisprudence for the first time.”

Anti-immigrant sentiment was a key factor behind Prohibition, partly because of record-high immigration in the preceding decades.

Saloons in immigrant neighborhoods were prime targets, says Slippery Rock University history professor Aaron Cowan, because middle-class white Protestants viewed them as political and social danger zones.

“Often the political machines run by the bosses were based in these saloons, or used them as a conduit for extending favors,” Cowan said. “So there was concern about political corruption, changing social values, immigrants learning radical politics.”

Prohibition’s start in 1920 coincided with a major expansion of the Ku Klux Klan, which supported the ban on alcohol as it waged its anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and racist activities.

The Volstead Act “provided a way for the Klan to legitimize its 100% Americanist mission — it could target the drinking of those they perceived to be their enemies,” McGirr said.

One notorious example occurred in 1923-24 in southern Illinois’ Williamson County, where the Klan mobilized hundreds of volunteers to raid saloons and roadhouses. Hundreds of people were arrested and more than a dozen killed.

That kind of social friction helped spur efforts to repeal Prohibition. Economics also played a role.

While some Prohibition supporters predicted it would boost the economy, instead it proved harmful. Thousands of jobs were lost due to closures of distilleries, breweries and saloons. Federal, state and local governments lost billions in revenue as liquor taxes disappeared. One major consequence: increasing reliance on income taxes to sustain government spending.

The onset of the Great Depression hastened Prohibition’s demise, as the need for more jobs and tax revenue became acute. The Democratic Party called for repeal of Prohibition in its 1932 platform; its presidential nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, embraced that cause as he rolled to a landslide victory over incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover.

In March 1933, soon after taking office, Roosevelt signed a law legalizing the sale of wine and 3.2% beer. Congress also proposed a 21st Amendment that would repeal the 18th Amendment. Prohibition formally ended that December, when Utah provided the final vote needed to ratify the new amendment.

One of the pithiest summaries of Prohibition came earlier — a scathing assessment from journalist H.L. Mencken in 1925.

Five years of Prohibition “completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists,” he wrote. “There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

Prohibition’s centennial comes as the United States is incrementally ending the criminalization of marijuana. Recreational use of pot is now legal in 11 states. More than 30 allow its use for medical purposes.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance, believes most Americans now view the anti-marijuana crusades of America’s “War on Drugs” as misguided in ways that evoke Prohibition.

“Even some of the older generation are saying, ‘We went too far. That was a mistake,’” he said.

VATICAN CITY — 

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI distanced himself Tuesday from a book on priestly celibacy and asked to be removed as its coauthor after the project gave the impression that the retired pope was trying to interfere with the reigning one.

Benedict’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, said in a statement that there had been a “misunderstanding” with the other coauthor and that Benedict never intended to have his name on the book, titled “From the Depths of Our Hearts.”

However, the book’s English publisher, Ignatius Press, refused to back down, saying it would publish the book as scheduled as a coauthored text, essentially defying the stated will of the aging former pontiff.

Advance excerpts of the book, which is set to be published in France on Wednesday and in the United States next month, had set Catholic social media abuzz, deepening conservative-progressive battle lines that had expanded after Benedict’s 2013 retirement paved the way for Francis’ papacy.

The book includes a chapter apiece by Benedict and Cardinal Robert Sarah, as well as an introduction and a conclusion said to be written jointly by the two. In the essay he wrote, Benedict reaffirmed the “necessity” of celibacy for the Catholic priesthood.

Although that position is not new, “From the Depths of Our Hearts” has Benedict chiming in on a fraught issue as Francis weighs whether to allow married men to be ordained priests in the Amazon to cope with a priest shortage there.

Benedict knew Sarah was planning a book about the priesthood and celibacy and contributed an essay, but “he never approved a coauthored book and never saw or authorized the cover” giving him lead author status, Gaenswein said.

“I can confirm that this morning, on the indication of the emeritus pope, I asked Cardinal Robert Sarah to contact the publishers of the book, asking them to take the name Benedict XVI off as coauthor and to take his signature from the introduction and conclusion,” Gaenswein said in a statement on Vatican News.

“It was a misunderstanding, without putting into doubt the good faith of Cardinal Sarah,” Gaenswein added.

Benedict’s association with the book was surprising since he had vowed to live “hidden from the world” when he stepped down as pope, specifically to avoid any suggestion that he still wielded papal authority.

The controversy made clear once again that the unprecedented reality of a retired and a reigning pope living side by side in the Vatican gardens still has some wrinkles that need to be worked out.

Some commentators have called for new rules for future retired popes, first among them not allowing them to be called “emeritus pope” or to wear the papal white cassock as Benedict has done, to remove all real and symbolic associations with the papacy.

The Associated Press obtained galleys of the English text after the French daily Le Figaro published excerpts Sunday.

Earlier Tuesday, as the scandal grew, Sarah reproduced letters from Benedict making clear that the 92-year-old retired pope had written the text and approved of publishing it as a book. He spoke out after news reports quoted “sources close to Benedict” as alleging that Sarah had manipulated the pope into publishing the book.

“These defamations are of exceptional gravity,” Sarah, who heads the Vatican’s liturgy office, tweeted at one point.

While insisting on the transparency of his interactions with Benedict, Sarah agreed to make the editorial changes for future publications.

“Considering the polemics provoked by the publication of the book ‘From the Depths of Our Hearts,’ it has been decided that the author of the book in future publications will be: Cardinal Sarah, with the contribution of Benedict XVI,” he tweeted. “However, the complete text will remain absolutely unchanged.”

But Ignatius Press is refusing to make any changes in authorship. In a statement, the U.S. publisher said it had worked from the text provided by French publisher Fayard, which listed two authors contributing a chapter each and a jointly written introduction and conclusion.

Given Benedict’s own letters and Sarah’s statement that the two men worked together on the book for several months, “Ignatius Press considers this a coauthored publication,” said the statement.

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Ignatius clearly has more to gain selling a book authored by a former pope than one written by a Vatican cardinal.

After the first reports, Francis’ supporters quickly alleged Benedict had been manipulated by members of his right-wing entourage into writing something that amounted to an attack on Francis. Some claimed it was evidence of elder abuse, given Benedict’s age and increasing frailty.

Conservatives, many of whom long for Benedict’s orthodoxy, argued that it was no such thing and noted that Francis too has reaffirmed the “gift” of priestly celibacy.

The Vatican tried to tamp down the furor by insisting the book was a mere “contribution” to the discussion about priestly celibacy written by two bishops in “filial obedience” to Francis.

Sarah — a hero to liturgical purists and conservatives and a quiet critic of Francis — denied there was any manipulation on his part and said Benedict was very much a part of the process.

He tweeted three 2018 letters from Benedict making clear that the retired pope had provided him the text and participated in discussions about publishing it. In a statement, Sarah chronicled all his interactions with Benedict and said the retired pope had approved the final text, including the joint introduction, conclusion and cover.

“From my side, the text can be published in the form you have foreseen,” read a Nov. 25 letter from Benedict to Sarah.

Sarah acknowledged he had warned Benedict that his participation in the project might create a media storm, but persuaded him it was worthwhile.

Quoting his own correspondence to Benedict, Sarah wrote: “I imagine that you might think your reflections might not be opportune because of the polemics they might provoke in newspapers, but I am convinced that the whole church needs this gift, which could be published around Christmas or the start of 2020.”

Sarah said he forgave all those who had defamed him by accusing him of manipulating Benedict, and affirmed his obedience to Francis.

SALT LAKE CITY — 

Utah lawmakers want to know how a license plate with the phrase “DEPORTM” got approved despite state rules against expressing contempt for any race, religion or political opinion on vanity plates.

While people have the right to freedom of speech, the messages that appear on license plates are different because they must be approved by the state, said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher.

“If someone put a bumper sticker on a car, I would shake my head and keep walking,” he said. “The state has approved this, so it’s a state-approved message and that’s wildly inappropriate.”

Lawmakers are expected to question the director of the Division of Motor Vehicles and his boss, the state tax commission director, at a hearing on Wednesday.

It comes after a picture of the plate gained attention online last week. Salt Lake City English teacher Matt Pacenza spotted it during his drive, snapped a picture and put it on Twitter and Facebook.

“It did jump out at me. I was surprised by it,” he said. So he did a quick search online. “What you find out right away is they do reject all kinds of plates.”

The state gets about 450 requests a month for vanity plates, and also bars messages that are vulgar, reference drugs or sex acts, or suggest something dangerous. It has denied messages ranging from “STRIPPN” to “REDWINE” to “JEWELZZ,” according to a list provided to the Associated Press.

It’s unclear how “DEPORTM” got through. It was approved in 2015, when the department was under different leadership, said Tammy Kikuchi, a spokeswoman for the tax commission.

But three other people have told the Salt Lake Tribune they complained about the plate as recently as a few weeks ago. Kikuchi has declined to comment on the case directly, saying it is now under review.

A license plate that breaks state rules can be recalled, but the owner can appeal the agency’s decision. The owner of the “deport” plate has not been identified.

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