One Summer: America, 1927 Author: Bill Bryson | Language: English | ISBN:
B00C8S9VKM | Format: EPUB
One Summer: America, 1927 Description
A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book
A GoodReads Reader's Choice
In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s
The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.
All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and
One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.
From the Hardcover edition.- File Size: 5687 KB
- Print Length: 528 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday (October 1, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00C8S9VKM
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,230 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Popular Culture - #2
in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Social History - #2
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > General
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Popular Culture - #2
in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Social History - #2
in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > General
Millions of words have been spent singing Bill Bryson's praises, so please allow me to add to them. His latest work of brilliant, comedic non-fiction, "One Summer: America, 1927," ranks among his greatest works. It's hard to think of a more insightful, more hilarious author working today.
Bryson's thesis is simple - America in the summer of 1927 may not have realized it, but it was taking its first steps as a world leader - in economics, in the arts, in sports, and in technology. Some of these developments were good, while others were reprehensible. Bryson manages to find either the humanity or the hilarity in each development - sometimes finding both.
Much of the book revolves around Charles Lindbergh's unimaginable feat of crossing the Atlantic in a plane. Today we don't think about Lindbergh much, but this event galvanized the world as no other event had previously done. Bryson writes at length about the other efforts to accomplish the same or similar feats and how many good men (and the occasional good woman) of several different countries died in the attempt. Bryson also focuses on how Lindbergh coped with being the most famous and adored person alive . . . for a time (until his pro-eugenics/Nazi sympathies became public . . . sympathies that Bryson extensively observes were shared by several "leading" intellects of the day). Lindbergh remains the heart of this dizzying book.
But by no means is Lindbergh the sole focus. Lindbergh's feat had tremendous economic consequences as it sparked the American aviation industry to unparalleled heights. Still, this was the summer of Henry Ford, who stopped work on the Model T in favor of the new Model A.
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