1927: High Tide of the 1920s

The traditionally nostalgic view of 1920s America recalls a boisterous, almost quaintly amoral nation peopled by revelers, flappers, gangsters and G-men, living alongside avaricious and immoral Babbitts and Arrowsmiths, governed by incompetent, narrow-minded politicians named Calvin and Herbert, all gleefully riding a roller coaster about to descend into the Great Depression. Much of Leinwand's material reflects this view. Al Capone and Elliot Ness, flamboyant evangelist Sister Aimee Semple McPherson, a virulently anti-Semitic Henry Ford, Sacco and Vanzetti, Charles Lindbergh, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant, Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth all make appearances, but Leinwand also looks beyond the familiar to excavate America's psyche during that decade. He doesn't shy from what he finds there, offering a picture of America marred by racism, political arrogance reflected by the country's first jungle war (a foray into Nicaragua), pervasive corruption and religious intolerance. He also describes a country in the throes of change. Inequalities of income and opportunity between rural and urban America were driving poor farmers to the cities and changing traditional demographics. Women were entering the workforce in substantial numbers and feminism was emerging as a force in politics and daily life. African-Americans were involved in a mass migration from the South to the industrial North, driven by a new militancy within the African-American community and the aftereffects of the epochal 1927 Mississippi River flood. Focusing on these weightier subjects, Leinwand, founding dean of the School of Education at Bernard M. Baruch College, provides invaluable insights into fundamental historical concerns, many of them relevant today. His well-documented research and confident, unobtrusive prose will appeal to anyone interested in U.S. history or cultural studies. (Feb. 12)