Extremely readable. Burns’s vigorous narrative is rich in genuinely engaging anecdote. He so clearly appreciates history’s sweep.
Burns proves that a year can hold a reader's attention and then some, with the year bringing on the fiasco that was Prohibition, jazz, the beginning and end of Ponzi's great scheme, and so much more. People with such characters as Marcus Garvey, William James, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Warren G. Harding, and with such events as the first-ever broadcast of presidential elections, Agatha Christie publishing her first book, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution being passed, 1920 makes history vibrant, exciting and palpably important. Entertaining and highly readable.
Burns’s territory stretches far and wide across the realms of politics, Prohibition, pop culture and more: communists,
suffragettes, Teapot Dome, birth control, the radio. He skillfully builds portraits of such figures as con artist Charles Ponzi, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and crusading U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
He brings to light events that have probably received scarce attention in standard school curricula. An eminently readable, informative book.
Burns delivers history with flair and vividness.
Covers one of the most dynamic periods of American history. A fine review of the new kinds of power emerging among women and minorities of the times, and the concurrent events that made the 1920s so significant.
In picking the one that set off the fabled Roaring Twenties, former NBC correspondent and 'Fox News Watch' host Eric Burns has really hit the mother lode. Like all good writers, though, Burns does not allow the confines of his chosen year to be a straitjacket. Burns shines a valuable light on the beginnings of domestic terrorism in the United States, a too little remembered chapter in our history, which continues to resonate.
Burns builds upon existing scholarship to explain the significance of this one year in an accessible way for non-academic readers.
A
roaring read, a thorough and thoughtful appraisal of a single year in our past and all its implications for our future.
A work of genuine historical research, colorful personality, intellectual sophistication, heft, and durable interest.
★ 2015-01-17
In a fascinating work about a remarkable year, former NBC News correspondent Burns (Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties, 2010, etc.) shows us what put the roar in the Roaring '20s.The end of World War I brought reactions in the form of anarchy, the birth of jazz, the first Ponzi scheme, Prohibition, women's suffrage and the birth of "mass media." Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, fought the Red Scare against the likes of Sacco and Vanzetti and the most notorious anarchist, Luigi Galleani, who swore by the "propaganda of the deed." Their work would lose effectiveness as their agents were diverted to enforce Prohibition, which caused its own problems. The Anti-Saloon League was the first of the special interest groups, and Prohibition cost organized crime its organization, as it became a growth industry to provide unregulated, and often lethal, liquor to the masses. The election of Warren Harding in 1920 was the first in which women voted and the first time returns were broadcast on radio. It also brought the "Ohio Gang" into Washington, a group who imported Canadian liquor by the trainload, sold Teapot Dome and ran cons that Ponzi, who made millions in a few short months, would have loved. There was also extensive birth and growth. The migration of blacks to the North looking for work brought the Ku Klux Klan in their wake, but they also brought jazz and other cultural elements. Jazz brought men like Louis Armstrong to Chicago and then New York and Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance was spurred not only by jazz, but also by literature—by Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and countless others. Burns follows it all with verve. In this delightfully readable book, the author expertly shows how those affected by the Great War linked together, nourished each other and really did change the world.
Extremely readable. Burns’s vigorous narrative is rich in genuinely engaging anecdote. He so clearly appreciates history’s sweep.
Burns proves that a year can hold a reader's attention and then some, with the year bringing on the fiasco that was Prohibition, jazz, the beginning and end of Ponzi's great scheme, and so much more. People with such characters as Marcus Garvey, William James, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Warren G. Harding, and with such events as the first-ever broadcast of presidential elections, Agatha Christie publishing her first book, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution being passed, 1920 makes history vibrant, exciting and palpably important. Entertaining and highly readable.
"Lively. Burns convincingly dispels a number of popular beliefs, including the idea that the 'ignoble experiment' of Prohibition was solely responsible for the birth of organized crime in America. He also finds parallels with many issues and 'civil wrongs' still running through our landscape: terrorism, immigration, women's rights, political corruption, and tabloid culture.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Burns’s territory stretches far and wide across the realms of politics, Prohibition, pop culture and more: communists, suffragettes, Teapot Dome, birth control, the radio. He skillfully builds portraits of such figures as con artist Charles Ponzi, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and crusading U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. He brings to light events that have probably received scarce attention in standard school curricula. An eminently readable, informative book.” —Washington Post
