Customer Reviews

New World Coming: The 1920s And The Making Of Modern America

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nathan Miller writes well enough to keep your attention throughout this book. He hits all the highlights of one of the most celebrated decades in U.S. history - from F Scott Fitzgerald to Charles Lindbergh, from the Scopes Trial to women's changing fashions -- but never gets bogged down on any particular area.

But Miller's judgments on the decade are too conventional. He has, for example, the typical disdain for the three Republican presidents whose tenure spans the decade. He wears it lightly, but it's obviously there. Miller also seems to accept much of the criticism by America's men of letters for the crassness of their own society, and often approvingly cites remarks they make about aspects of American life. H.L. Mencken is quoted with a disparaging remark about Coolidge's social instincts; John Kenneth Galbraith is quoted on the Great Depression; Warren Harding is compared to Sinclair Lewis's literary character George Babbitt. Haven't we all tasted this literary ragout before? Why the need for another helping?

Miller still occasionally surprises with some small story or detail. Sigmund Freud's visit to the United States is discussed in a small section on the psychiatrist's enormous influence in America. I had forgotten about the emergence of so many new skyscrapers in the twenties. And it was fascinating to read about the land mania in Florida. But these interesting sidelines fail to elevate the book above mediocrity. If you haven't read about the 1920s before, you might find this history very interesting, but if you already know a good deal about the decade, this book will add little to your understanding of it.

America has not had a sweeping popular history of the 1920s since Frederick Allen's "Only Yesterday," published some 70 years ago. Now Miller has surpassed Allen with a book that covers the roaring decade in greater depth, and does it in dancing, supremely readable prose. He brings the 20s alive, with all the jazz, bathtub gin, scandal, Babe Ruth and Hemingway that
have made the period such a favorite for Hollywood. But it was not all laughs and bubbles; Miller reminds us that the KKK was reborn then, and describes its crimes. Radio and air travel were changing the way Americans dealt with each other and the world. Fierce showdowns in mines and factories were redefining relations between capital and labor. Miller makes a convincing case that the political and economic excesses of the booming 20s clearly foreshadowed what has happened in the nation in the decade just past. It's all here, and it's fun to read. It gets an easy five stars.

I just finished this book and it is fast-paced, enjoyable and generally informative. But the authors obvious liberal political bias makes one question his objectivity and accuracy. For example, his comparison of Florence Harding to Hillary Clinton is laughable. Love and desire may have played a role in her decision to "stand by her man' but who can deny that greed and ambition played a larger role.

If one is able ignore the authors snide political interjections, the book is a fun read.

Nathan Miller is a great writer, you can tell that he loves his craft, he does it well. He tells the story of the 1920's very well and keeps his reader entertained. He is an expert at keeping the discipline of writing a good history book while having creativity of writing an entertaining story.

This is the first major history of the 1920's since Allen's, "Only Yesterday," I've been waiting for a good book on the 1920's since reading Allen's because when Allen wrote his book Hoover was still president! Obviously someone needed to write a new book on the 1920's, Miller does that here and analyzes everything that Allen left out. Some of the things that Allen did not go into much detail about in, "Only Yesterday" include the African American plight and the labor struggles during the period. Obviously Allen does not go into the end of Hoover's term because he was still president when the book was published.

If you were trying to choose between the two books, this one and, "Only Yesterday," I would certainly recommend this one. Miller has created what should become the definitive book on the 1920's, it is, as I've mentioned before, not only extremely informative but also an entertaining journey.

After reading Jonathan Yardley's review of this book in the Washington Post, I bought it to learn about a decade I knew little about. This book fulfilled its promise and more.

Rather than look at a timeline of events, it examines themes that ran through the 20s, presenting key figures, looking at social events, such as the stock market rise and fall and prohibition, and the narrative it presents is lively and immensely interesting. This is history as it should be written.

Nathan Miller has provided us with a nicely written compact history of the 1920's in his book New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America.

In this work, Miller provides us with a picture of many aspects of America during the decade, including political; economic; and social history, while not ignoring the plight of minorities or women during the decade.

The book starts in the 1910's, during the Wilson Administration, as this lays the precursor for the decade of the twenties. Quite honestly, I think that Miller spends a little too much time on the Wilson years, since this book is supposed to be a history of the twenties, but the background information is solid & necessary for a good understanding of the decade following.

Miller gives us nice brief biographical portaits of some of the people that "made the news" in the 20's - Al Capone, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Charles Lindbergh, and Louis Armstrong. The collection of characters seen in the pages of the work help to explain the breadth of the book, although it was not an overly deep work (as expected in a book of just under 400 pages).

Overall, for anyone that is looking for a basic understanding of the decade, I would highly recommend this book. Needles to say, hundreds of the topics covered within the pages of this work could be easily expanded into individual works, so don't expect an all-encompassing thorough history in this volume - just sit back, enjoy the ride, and witness the 20's from 10,000 feet.

All decades are not created equal. In the twentieth century in America, a few stand out, perhaps none more so than the Twenties and the Sixties. Nathan Miller in this book argues, to my mind somewhat unconvincingly, that the Twenties was key in creating the modern world. In fact, he doesn't make his case. He makes a few comparisons between trends or events of that decade and today, but there is no sustained argument, certainly no clearly stated thesis, and in the end no major pay off. So, in a sense the goal implied in the subtitle of the book falls completely short of its promise. If one compares what Miller attempts to do with the Twenties with what David Halbertstam did with the Fifties, the effort does not come off very well. Halbertstam made his case in a way that Miller does not. Is the book therefore without value? By no means. This is, in fact, the finest existing survey of what happened in the Twenties, definitely surpassing Allen's famous ONLY YESTERDAY, which while reflective of the mood of the time lacked perspective as well as many facts.

By any standards, the Twenties stands out in American history. There were fewer major historical events than in other decades, but culturally few decades have witnessed the same degree of change. Only the Sixties can bear comparison in the past century. Miller points out that most people in the decade were far more conservative than the image of the period would suggest. But it was a period that was heaving with all kinds of social change and resistance to change. Social roles were being challenged to a degree never before seen, but there were also some remarkable right wing, reactionary forces. It was the great decade of popularity for the Ku Klux Klan, albeit one that was far more moderate than the Klan both of the past and the future (one of my family's legends is that my grandfather was briefly a member of the Klan during the Twenties, as were huge numbers of people before it became more radical in the thirties).

Miller is at his best when discussing the individuals who dominated the age. He is weaker when discussing the age's dominant ideas and trends. The history therefore feels at times more like a serial biography. Individuals like Fitzgerald, Harding, Coolidge, Lindbergh, Mencken, Hoover, Wilson, and Sanger play the major roles in the story. For the most part, one gets the sense that he has struck the right balance between the decades major figures. There were, however, two gargantuan absences: Will Rogers and Dashiell Hammett. The latter should not have been given a large treatment, but it was in the Twenties that Hammett created the detective stories that more or less gave birth to the hardboiled world that inspired film noir and a huge amount of modern cynical culture. If one is trying to write about where the modern world begins, in the world of literature Hammett is one of the key places. But the lack of space dedicated to Will Rogers is inexplicable and is the greatest weakness in the book. Miller quotes Rogers a couple of times, but he was the most popular individual of the decade, as widely read as Mencken, a popular movie stage, a dominant stage performer, and perhaps the most trusted man in America. In fact, if Lindbergh was the most revered American of the decade, Rogers was the most loved. You simply can't understand the Twenties if you don't understand the massive popularity of Will Rogers. One would have anticipated the kind of space for Rogers that Miller allots Mencken or Fitzgerald. I have no explanation for his omission. This is not mere nitpicking: it is the kind of mistake that can cause one to lose confidence in a writer. Nonetheless, this one gaff aside, Miller does a fine job of honing in on correct individuals.

I very much appreciated his treatment of Herbert Hoover. In the past few years we've heard a lot about moral character and the presidency. The truth is, there is virtually no connection between one's moral character and how good one performs as president. Franklin Roosevelt is almost universally regarded as one of our three great presidents, but he also possessed some definite moral flaws. John F. Kennedy was far from perfect, but showed definite potential to be a fine president had he lived. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was not a strong president despite being one of the finest individuals to hold the office. Ditto Rutherford B. Hayes. And so also Herbert Hoover. Throughout his life Hoover was primarily a progressive focused on the public good, and has a public record second to almost no American president. Yet his blind and stubborn insistence on allowing the workings of the free market (contrary to popular bias, never a good thing to do) to take care of the Depression stands as one of the worst decisions made by any American political figure. Miller does a fine job of showing how otherwise capable and goodhearted Hoover was, and it is a testimony to Hoover that after his poorly regarded term in office he went on to be one of our great ex-presidents. Ironically, most of our great ex-presidents--Carter, Hoover, Hayes, Taft, and John Quincy Adams--were rather mediocre presidents.

With the misgivings noted above, I enthusiastically recommend this book. The Twenties was one of the truly fascinating periods in American history and no one who wants to understand America can fail to be acquainted with it or its key figures.

This book is written by a journalist, and as you read it, that fact becomes more evident. And as a former journalist, I believe that's both good and bad.

Miller does a very nice job of telling the story of the 1920s. His research is extensive. He effectively sets the scene by describing the mid- to late-1910s, and his epilogue about the 1932 election is a nice way to end the book. I also loved the short biographical sketches that he wrote about all the key figures, from the politicians and writers to the crime bosses and sports stars. It is a very informative, easy-to-read account of this most fascinating decade.

The book is very thematic in that Miller spends most of the early part of the book on politics, from Harding to Coolidge. He then hits on one key aspect of the era's social history after another, including prohibition, immigration, religion, sports, art, etc. He later ties it together with the 1928 election and the Stock Market crash. It's impossible to read this book and not learn plenty about the period, unless you were already an expert.

The downside of Miller's journalist background is that, in writing the book like a massive feature/news story, he failed to include a central argument or theme. He opines a few times that the stereotypes of the 1920s are largely myths, and the title indicates that a case will be made for the decade as the time when the modern world really began to take shape. But I didn't find there to be a main theme. I just found it to be an enjoyable story of an interesting decade. And to be honest, that's OK with me.

As I continue to march through the ages, I now come across Nathan Miller's guide to America in the 1920s. It was a decade that saw an incredible transformation of a nation and a people. This was the era where the motorized car did away with the horse and buggy forever. Sandwiched in between two world wars, the 1920s buzzed with excitement and wonder about the new age. This was the first decade that American women were able to vote in Federal elections. In this era, flight would start to become a more mainstream way of traveling and the skies of the major cities would see the rise of the new incredible feet of engineering: the Skyscraper. With the new popular HBO series Boardwalk Empire now heading into its second season, I would recommend this book as a great introductory guide. It presents a world where alcohol was illegal yet almost everyone was still drinking.

Leadership in the Twenties was lacking in comparison to the nation's first two decades in the twentieth century. The first fifth of the century the nation was led by the inspirational leadership of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and the president who was not as successful, William H. Taft--was a great man in his own right. The Twenties saw the leadership of the pathetic, to the boring, and ended with a disaster. Warren G. Harding started the decade off with his election which was the first time in American history in which women participated. It was unfortunate that such a sad president was the result of this historic occasion. Harding was not himself a bad man but he knew that he was not qualified for the job that the people had elected him to do.

"'John, I can't make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side and they seem to be right and then--God!--I talk to the other side and they seem just as right, and here I am where I started. I know somewhere there is a book that will give me the truth, but hell, I couldn't read the book. I know somewhere there is an economist who knows the truth, and I don't know where to find him, and haven't the sense to know and trust him when I find him. God, what a job!'" (p.88)

Calvin Coolidge was smart but dull. He was known as the last nineteenth century president. It was under his leadership that the country went through great prosperity in the heart of the decade. Despite great economic success President Coolidge governed over a nation that had a growing cancer. This cancer, one of the nasty aspects of the 1920s, was raised to height of its power during the decade. The cancer was the hateful Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was more than just a terrorist organization. It was a hate group that extended its political power into the halls of Congress.

"Both Texas and Indiana were represented in the U.S. Senate by Klansmen, about seventy-five members of Congress owed their seats to the Klan, and the governors of Indiana, Georgia, Alabama, California, and Oregon had been elected with its support. In Oregon, where there were over 100,000 Klansmen in a population of 850,000, the Klan elected the mayor of Portland and would have succeeded in outlawing Catholic schools except for a ruling by the Supreme Court." (p.145)

Miller describes how the nation really changed in the Twenties was in the rise of the automobile. Although invented prior, the automobile really had its era begin in the Twenties. Miller compares the auto's impact to similar technological impacts such as television in the 1950s and the Internet in the 1990s. And the man who was at the front of the automobile's takeover of the American streets was Henry Ford with his Model T.

"The Model T offered a combination of innovation and reliability, ruggedness and power never before seen in a reasonably priced automobile. Although derided as the Tin Lizzie, the car was built strong, yet light-weight chrome-vanadium steel, which Ford experts perfected after their chief picked up a sample from a wrecked French racer. Because of its lightness the car got twenty-five miles on a gallon of gasoline compared to the engine, which gave it a top speed of forty miles per hour, semiautomatic planetary transmission, and magneto, which supplied power for the spark and lights while doing with heavy storage batteries, were all new designs." (p.180)

What Ford did was not only make great cars, but he made them affordable. Ford make them affordable by making them available. He made them available by creating the assembly line, in doing this he revolutionized the industry and made cars affordable to the common man and the common woman.

"'The man who places a part doesn't fasten it,' exulted Henry Ford. 'The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not tighten it.' He boasted that any job could now be learned in little time, with nearly half requiring only a single day. Labor costs were reduced because there was no need for skilled workers. Before the introduction of the assembly line, it took twelve hours to build a car; in 1914, the time dropped to ninety-three minutes." (p.181-2)

The African-American community, oppressed with discrimination and segregation legally with terrorism and lynching illegally, found a method of resistance and cultural empowerment in the Harlem Renaissance. The center of African-American culture, Harlem, would be the intellectual breeding ground for the Civil Rights Movement that would, on the other side of the century, change the world.

"'On a bright December morning in 1921,' recalled poet Langston Hughes, 'I came up out of the subway at the 135th and Lenox into the beginnings of the Negro Renaissance.' While young white writers found their Mecca in Paris, Harlem was the center of the cultural and intellectual life of black America during the Twenties. If you were black and you wanted to write, you came to Harlem; if you were black and wanted to dance or sing, you came to Harlem; if you were black and you wanted to effect social change, you came to Harlem. Harlem was more than a geographic location--it was the soul and heart of African-American culture." (p.220)

What most everyone remembers about the Twenties is the failed experiment of Prohibition. Not only did the government fail to stop people drinking, but by making drinking a crime they created a disrespect of the average person for law enforcement. It made heroes of bootleggers and other celebrity criminals. It helped create the rise of the mobster and the criminal rackets that would infiltrate local governments. Organized crime was already on the rise but the coming of Prohibition feed the beast and made it grow faster than it would have naturally.

"Some of those involved showed a genius for business organization and made fortunes. Every major American city had its own underworld gang that peddled beer and booze and carved out territories for its distribution. Big Bill Dwyer was a longshoreman on the Brooklyn docks in 1920 and, three years later, was the largest importer of whiskey in the nation. Waxey Gordon--ne Irving Wexler--began his career as a pickpocket on the Lower East Side but, by the mid-1920s, owned a pair of skyscraper hotels, a brewery in New Jersey, and had an interest in a large distillery in upstate New York. Dutch Schultz controlled the beer business in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. In Detroit, the Purple Gang, a loose coalition of Jewish groups, liquidated the competition. In Boston, Charles Soloman assumed the role of boss; in Philadelphia, there was Max 'Boo Boo' Hoff; in Denver, Joseph Roma; in Cleveland, the Mayfield Road Mob. None had the power and influence of Chicago's Al Capone." (p. 301)

Miller describes the rise of the modern celebrity obsessed culture that would get its first character with Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh was made famous by the first solo flight across the Atlantic in which he made aviation history and became a national icon. The celebrity culture would also celebrate Babe Ruth the famous baseball slugger.

"Charles Lindbergh arrived on the scene as a culture of celebrity was taking root in America--a culture encouraged by the flashy new tabloid newspapers that were revolutionizing American journalism. Scandal, sex, and crime were the lifeblood of the tabloids--or half size--newspapers designed for subway straphangers. The New York Daily News was the first and most successful with a daily circulation of over a million copies. William Randolph Hearst's Daily Mirror and the Graphic--known as the Pornographic--imitated their rival with varying degrees of success. The taboos of genteel journalism had already been broken by the yellow journalism of Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer at the turn of the century, but the tabloids went even further with in presenting journalism as entertainment, gossip as news, the trivial and salacious as the drama of life--a trend that sent quality journalism into full retreat and has since taken over television." (p. 329)

Second to Prohibition, the one thing most people remember about the 1920s is the way in which it ended. Black Thursday October 29, 1929 the day the stocks started to drop fast. What I found most interesting was the way Miller reminds his readers how the Great Depression came in waves. At first, on October 30, it did not seem so bad. But as the stocks continued to fall, banks began to close and firms followed which led to mass unemployment without any protection to the unemployed from the waves of the market. President Hoover had no idea how to act.

"Americans were puzzled--and then deeply angered--that a president who handed out relief to corporations could ignore the misery of people grubbing in garbage cans for food. No leader who permitted such a policy could maintain the confidence of his people. The Democrats won great gains in the 1930 off-year elections, including control of both houses of Congress. Hoover saw his name transformed into a symbol of derision: encampments of shacks erected by the homeless on the edges of the great cities were 'Hoovervilles,' broken-down automobiles pulled by mules were 'Hoover wagons,' and empty pockets turned inside out were 'Hoover flags.' He was the butt of a hundred bitter jokes. When he dedicated a monument and a twenty-one-gun salute boomed out, an old man was supposed to have said: 'By gum, twenty-one chances and they missed him.'" (p.380)

Miller does a great job at bringing the 1920s and the America of that era to his readers. My only one complaint was like like the Restless Decade there are no visuals (photos, political cartoons, or election maps). Nevertheless this is a great book that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in this time period or just likes the show Boardwalk Empire.

The people we associate with the decade of the 1920's are all here along with anecdotes about all of them. I am not much of a fan of political history, and this book has its share of stories involving Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and F.D.R. However, author Nathan Miller provides us with human interest stories of each of these presidents in addition to individuals from the world of entertainment, sports, industry, and gangsterdom. The decade of prohibition from use of alcohol and the consequences from passage of the 18th Amendment is dealt with in detail. Great social changes were sweeping the nation with the coming of radio, the automobile, and motion pictures to name a few. The 20's brought us radio, the 50's brought television, and the 90's brought us the internet. I found the book to be very informative, and even though the book is nearly 400 pages long, it was a very interesting read with a colorful cast of characters that the 1920's brought us. Whether you like political or social history you will enjoy both in this book.