The Great Trials Of The Twenties: The Watershed Decade In America's Courtrooms

by Robert Grant, Joseph Katz

Overview

1920s America was at peace at home and abroad but issues facing the nation were highlighted by a series of trials including baseball's Black Sox, Al Capone, John T. Scopes, Sacco and Vanzetti, Leopold and Loeb, and the court martial of Billy Mitchell. Americans will find this book on trials of the “Roaring Twenties” provocative. Great Trials begins with an extensive introduction describing “the setting” of that tumultuous decade, and follows with an in-depth examination of 10 trials, touching on nearly every facet of American life. Each case is a fascinating story, and the fierce jousts in these courtrooms impart to the reader both how different things once were, and how much the nature of argumentative individuals has remained exactly the same.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781885119520
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	12/22/1998
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	0.81(w) x 6.00(h) x 9.00(d)

Editorial Reviews

Historians Grant (Framingham Coll.) and Katz (Long Island Univ.) Offer objective but dramatically narrated accounts of ten major trials that reflected the fierce crosswinds of change in the US in the tumultuous n20s. For instance, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in which two Italian immigrants were found guilty of murder on seemingly slender evidence, reflected fear and anger at the increasing number of foreigners settling in the US. The national pastime, baseball, was tainted in the Chicago "Black Sox" scandal. The case of comic actor Fatty Arbuckle, who after two hung juries was finally acquitted of manslaughter charges ensuing from a wild party, represented public outrage against the hedonistic morals of Hollywood in a still puritanical America. Teapot Dome, the Scopes trial, and the case of Leopold and Loeb are among the other cases ably recounted by the authors. (16 pages illustrations, not seen)

Kirkus Reviews