Customer Reviews

The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (Galaxy Books)

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This well researched and well written study of young people in the 1920's is indespensable to anyone who is interested in the social history of the period. It examines all facets of the "flaming youth" of the period, and offers careful analysis of the people and period. Ms. Fass uses a broad range of original sources to construct her detailed work. Despite it's breadth and depth, it is also easy and fun enough for anyone to read.

This book is absolutely indespensable to anyone who enjoys Fitzgerald, the history of young people, 20th century social history, or the 1920's.

When I was writing my book COMPLICATED WOMEN, I started looking for books that talked about what was happening with youth in the early part of the 20th century. THE DAMNED AND THE BEAUTY had everything I needed to know. Fass's research is thorough and impeccable, and she's a fine writer. I leaned heavily on this book and on Fass's research. I read other books, plenty of them, but kept coming back to this one. Anyone interested in the 1920s should read this. No scholar who writes about the 20s should dare pass this up.

This book is a must read for those who want to know about American youth in the 1920s.

It's not a read to undertake for pleasure. It's fairly scholarly-written, is chock full of statistics and notes (to look up in the back of the book) on every other page. The research undertaken for this book is phenomenal.

It is written by an History professor from University of California at Berkeley. The insight into the lives of young Americans during that time is invaluable. If you're like me and you are enchanted by this era, although dry and full of numbers and studies etc, this book will deepen your fascination for it.

As a writer who writes a lot of fiction set in this era, it is a must have book. Anybody who writes fiction or non-fiction set in this time has to have this book. You will find it indespensible.

At first, I felt that maybe reading it would take some of the mistique out of the era, but it did not. It deepened my affection for it.

Paula Fass takes us through the social, cultural and sexual changes of the transition from the post Victorian era and into the Plastic Age. The journey she takes us on through the peer politics on university campuses throughout the United States is fascinating.

And all those hippies from the 1960s thought *they* invented cultural liberailism!

This is one of the books my daughter needed for one of her classes at OSU. It is one that she will keep.