Product Description

Now in paperback, this is an exhilarating portrait of the era of invention, glamour and excess from one of the brightest young stars of mainstream history writing. Bracketed by the catastrophes of the Great War and the Wall Street Crash, 1920s America was a place of drama, tension and hedonism. It glittered and seduced: jazz, flappers, wild all-night parties, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene flourishing under prohibition. But the period was also punctuated by momentous events - the political show trials of Sacco and Vanzetti; the huge Ku Klux Klan march down Washington DC's Pennsylvania Avenue - and it produced a splendid array of writers, musicians and film stars, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Bessie Smith and Charlie Chaplin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4690 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

Review
"'It was a decade that absolutely fizzed - and Lucy Moore has produced an absolutely fizzing book to match her subject. I could not put it down... The most entertaining work of history you are likely to read in a long while.' A. N. Wilson 'A varied and dazzling portrait gallery of crooks and film stars, boxers and presidents, each brilliantly delineated and coloured in by a historian with a novelist's relish for human foibles.' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times 'Eminently readable... A sparkling collection of the anecdotes and personalities that defined the roaring Twenties... Fascinating.' Jennifer O'Connell, Sunday Business Post 'Zestful... A delightful canter through the history of America in the 1920s' Sunday Times Books of the Year 'Like the champagne-immersed age she portrays, Moore's book effervesces with the detail of this fascinating story.' Juliet Nicolson, Evening Standard"

Review
'Moore has a wonderful eye for the telling detail... The result is a varied and dazzling portrait gallery of crooks and film stars, boxers and presidents, each brilliantly delineated and coloured in by a historian with a novelist's relish for human foibles.'

About the Author
Lucy Moore was born in 1970 and educated in Britain and the US before reading history at Edinburgh. Voted one of the 'top twenty young writers in Britain' by the Independent on Sunday in 2001, her books include the bestselling Maharanis: The Lives & Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses (Viking, 2004) and the acclaimed Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France (HarperCollins, 2006).

Customer Reviews

A fun but flawed introduction to a fascinating decade
Although I find the current trend among publishers for `biographies' of inanimate objects, ideas, phenomena etc mildly annoying, I can see why Atlantic might be hesitant to call this a history. In reality it's a collection of episodes strung together to illustrate different aspects of 1920s culture. There's no attempt to put these developments in context or provide much in the way of background. Moore's judgement can be suspect too. A chapter on Charles Lindbergh, for example, is devoted almost entirely to a Boy's Own account of his daring flight across the Atlantic; his well-documented and highly controversial political views barely merit a mention, so you're left with a very one-sided portrait of the man.

One final point to bear in mind is that this isn't a history of the 20s, it's a history of the 20s in America. Anyone looking for coverage of the General Strike, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the march of Leninism in Russia, agitation for independence in India, conflict in the Middle East, or the modernisation of China - or even who wants to see American events placed in a wider context - will be disappointed.

This said, Lucy Moore has written a hugely enjoyable book. There's not a lot of original research on show, so there won't be much here for the expert. For the rest of us, though, there's likely to be plenty that's of interest. I found the chapter on the Wall Street crash rather shallow, for example, but the chapters on the Harlem Renaissance, Harry Crosby and American bohemianism, and the circus surrounding Warren Harding fascinating. In fact, I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that I went out and invested in a small library of early jazz records purely on the strength of Moore's enthusiastic descriptions of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith wowing audiences in smokey, prohibition era gin-joints.

The 20s was a fascinating decade full of innovations and contradictions. In its worship of money, youth and celebrity, especially in sport and cinema, its love of technological innovation, its scandal and crime, its investment bubbles and widening inequalities, and its freedom and high spirits it has a lot to say to us. This well written, highly readable account, which fizzes along like a gin-sling, is a great, if limited and idiosyncratic, introduction.

Absolutely wonderful
Received this book as a Christmas present, and read it pretty much in one (long) sitting. It's a fantastic read. It's very well structured, and full of anecdotes and details which are both interesting and illuminating. As soon as I finished it, I ordered some of Lucy Moore's other books from the library. Buy it and you won't be disappointed.