1920

1920

Adult nonfiction
"It was the first full year after the Treaty of Versailles had
officially ended the Great War, and Americans were not as relieved as
they had hoped to be. They were joyful, of course, but at other times
saddened; optimist, but no less confused, enthusiastic, yet unable to
escape a certain sense of dread. It is neither easy nor usual to hold
such conflicting emotions at the same time; then again, the year was
neither easy nor usual."
It took him about a year, but President Trump finally said
something I can agree with: he's taking America back...
...what I would add is, to the 1920's. If you've read my blog
for any length of time, you know I don't consider that America's
finest decade. We had the grossly widening gap between rich and poor
and the irresponsible financial shenanigans that plunged the nation
into the Great Depression. J. Edgar Hoover and his chums were fueling
paranoia about anarchists and socialists. The resurrected KKK had
gone mainstream adding country fairs to their cross burning activities
and winning over fundamentalist ministers and congregations. There
was a great fear that America's past greatness was being swept away in
a tide of mediocracy. Solutions for making America great again
focussed on drastically restricting immigration of all but Anglo and
Nordic types (as opposed to folks from "shit hole" nations) and
forcibly sterilizing "reprehensibles." (Your faithful reviewer BTW
would have been sterilized for having epilepsy.)
You see where I'm going with this? Those iconic flappers we
imagine when we think of the 1930's were only the tip of the
proverbial iceberg.
Eric Burns' 1920: The Year That Made The Decade Roar is a must
read for those who find the 20's as fascinating and prophetic as I
do. In his introduction Burns tells us "...But although the year that
is the subject of this book was a preview of a decade, it turned out
to be more than that: it would be a preview of the entire century and
even the beginning of the century to follow, the one in which we live
today..." His work lives up perfectly to the promise of that
sentence. He addresses the many complexities of the year in
straightforward very readable narrative.
Readers will get insights into facets such as how:
*the new mass media dumbed down its audiences while increasing
fearfulness with its if it bleeds it leads focus;
*a Wall Street explosion and its interpretation by Hoover and
colleagues fueled paranoia concerning socialists and anarchists;
*the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Constitution went in
very different directions;
*the people who created the large, prosperous corporations that
constituted the nation's wealth destroyed their workers;
and *so much more.
On a personal note, my friend and mentor, Lisa Morin, reminded me in
about 6 weeks I'll be starting my masters program. Somehow it does
not seem real. It may not until school actually starts. I'm glad I'm
having the chance to get good at my job so I won't have to learn it
the same time I'm getting used to masters level work.
A great big shout out goes out to students about to embark on exciting
and scary new education phases.
jules hathaway



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