Customer Reviews

What It Felt Like: Living in the American Century

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What It Felt Like is the perfect description of this little jewel of a book. I read it, I looked at the illlustrations, and I could smell the leaves burning on the road outside our house at dusk; I could hear the sound of my jump rope swishing across the pavement of our small town street. I could smell the bacon and eggs my mother cooked for us on school mornings (and then I could remember the smell of the grits which I hated!). I know, I finally know, why the sixties seemed so dizzying to me, not because Allen lectures me on them, but because he wakens my senses of them -- the sights, the sounds, and the sweetness of them.

How lovely to be reminded and not "talked to." This book is not a "tome." What It Felt Like is an invitation to recall, to reflect, to rejoice. How delightful to read a book where the mere phrase, often followed by an electrifyingly exciting tour de force of word combinations, does all the work, and I have all the fun. How extraordinary to find a writer who so clearly treasures the true glory of words, and not just the abundance of them.

What a wonderful Christmas gift Mr. Allen has given us. I'm going to give it to my children and my friends, and my neighbors and ....

In this book, Henry Allen, one of the Washington POST's big dogs, has written beautifully of our past century. He celebrates America from the start of "Modern Times" to the edgy reality of Today.

His unerring hand captures the essence of each decade with the keen eyes and ears of a participant. Remarkably, his skill reveals even the rich patois of early dialogues; capturing the meter and parlance of the day-to-day conversations of the early 1900's and beyond.

As he takes us on this compelling jaunt through the decades, a marvelous story of The People of the past unfolds. Allen treats the reader's senses to vivid visual history, too, seasoning our "conventional wisdom" with a masterful dash of his always believable characteriztions.

Originally published in The POST, the series was immediately snagged by the publisher for this release.

Allen, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has captured my imagination with "What It Felt Like." In this highly readable, enjoyable book, he moves easily from scenes of the chattering bustle of the Industrial Revolution to the brilliant sunshine of the acid-drenched, screwy Sixties. From the agonies of the Thirties to the boomtime of the Fifties.

I urge you to pick up a copy, curl up on a lazy day and enjoy one of my new favorite books. A thoroughly enjoyable "read."

PS to GRAND PARENTS: Why not give copies to the kids and the family this Christmas? "What It Felt Like" is a great conversation starter.

It is a daunting task to capture the essence of the 20th Century in one book, but Henry Allen has done it to a faretheewell. The format is one that holds one's attention with wonderful language and imagery. It is humorous and enchanting at the same time. Obviously, Mr. Allen did not live through the entire century, but he writes about each decade so believably that he takes you on a journey with him that places you in the middle of daily life in each of the decades. The technique is wonderful, and the book is a joy.

I was pretty shocked when I opened my box from Amazon and found such a tiny book that promised to tell what what life was like in all decades of this past century. However, once I started reading, I could not stop. When I compared what he wrote about the early years of the 1900's to the fifties, when I could first remember things, Allen's descriptions fit to a T, just what my mother and grandmother had told me. And when I got to the section where I was alive, I felt right at home. He is right on target with the words, phrases and ideas of the way we were. If you are expecting a detailed history of the last century, this is not the book for you. But what this little book does, is capture the essence of each decade concisely and cleverly. And then if you are really interested you can go on and seek out other books on the history of that particular era. I am going to keep mine and one day let grandchildren read it.

Henry Allen has given his readers a whirlwind tour of the 20th Century in a little gem of a book. For convenience he divides the century into ten year periods even though he recognizes that "ages don't match decades." Its amazing how Allen is able to capture the nuances of each time frame in simple easy to read brilliantly effective language. Using a snippet of conversation here, a quick word picture there, or the mention of a major or minor event of the age somewhere else, he pulls the reader so smoothly into the narrative that one actually gets the impression that he or she has a sense of what it actually felt like to be living in America back then. Try it for yourself. Pick out your own personal frame of reference and read through the text. You'll be surprised and delighted at how many memories can be evoked with so few words.

What a masterful book! This book would be a great gift for your children, your grandchildren, or yourself. I'm pretty sure my copy will be worn and dog-eared before long. I imagine I'll buy another copy as a gift for myself.

this little book starts off as a somewhat enjoyable, though somewhat trite, selection of essays on early 20th century america. it then proceeds to build into an annoying personal diatribe against modernity, that reaches a hilarious (though meant to be serious) climax on the last page, where the author pompously pronounces, "we fled reality and ourselves." that's us america. that's what we've done. silly us. i know nothing about this author (he looks like a nice fella in the picture of him the publisher included), but i would not care to spend time with him based on this book. i may be wrong, but there has to be a divorce or two in his life. there just has to be. you could not live with a whiner like this for long. with each passing decade he whines more and more about the way life is heading. well, i don't like a heck of a lot of it either, but i got to admit we've improved over the last hundred years. this is something this author will remain forever blind to. his personal prejudices block out the possiblity that life is better now. i happen to agree with a lot of what he says. what annoys me so about the book is his self-rightoues tone. please henry, relax. take a chill-pill. enjoy life. stop ripping into people for enjoying the things they do.

Most books can be compared to other books; this one stands alone. I have never read anything like it. The author has a clear,lyric but unobtrusive prose style and the ability to cast himself back in time to capture the flavor of American life decade by decade since 1900. It's like looking at a collection of old Life magazines in the attic, only better. Really makes you feel you were there. Buy it and you will not regret it.

Always intrigued to read a book written by a Pulitzer Prize winning author, I must admit that on first site I was a bit skeptical of What It Felt Like: Living in the American Century's trim appearance. But on an overcast winter afternoon in San Francisco I picked up the book and began to read. I consciously remember sitting on the couch reading the first few pages...Next thing... I was arguing with my wife, a different wife - country club type, 1940. I felt a tapping on my shoulder and snapping back to 2001, my wife -- my real wife, was hovering above me with a knowing grin - dinner was ready. It had been an hour since I started reading and it was then that I realized Henry Allen had done something wonderful with this book.

If you are looking for the type of history book that spews facts at you in a traditional manner, an objective and dry write-up, then this isn't the book for you. However, if you are looking for a 130-page piece of social-historical prose, reading more like a poem than a textbook then you have found the right book.

Henry Allen manages to introduce (if you're as young as I am) or remind you (if you're my grandparent's age), of what society was like in each of the decades comprising the 20th century. The book prefers to take a blanket approach to the decades by presenting social scenarios involving fictional characters and situations relating to the times. We can take comfort under these blankets because the situations that Mr. Allen describes are ones with which we can all relate. While we identify with each fictional scenario and character, the book weaves historical threads of political, economic, and artistic events into the blanket to help explain why our characters have been placed in their current situations. Written in an up-beat prose style you float from page to page, decade to decade, soaking up facts and threads, and not even realizing it until you've been called for dinner.

As an Art Historian I can attest to the fluency and accuracy with which Mr. Allen addresses his artistic references. This makes me believe that somehow he's managed to squeeze 1000 pages worth of textbook history into 130 pages of prose. If you're anything like me, you've read myriad American History books during your education -- and come test time it was a race to see if you could memorize the facts in time to pass (which didn't always happen). But I will tell you this -- if Henry Allen had been our teacher, we all would all have received A's -- because you don't need to memorize what happened in each decade when you KNOW what it felt like.

This is a concise history of the American Cultures exhibited in the 20th century. The author uses ten chapters, one for each decade. He displayed his liberal point of view and considered mostly the extreme radical happenings to paint his cultural pictures. It's not that his illustrations did not occur but lots of other moderate life styles were also progressing. He fails to even mention these. I have lived through most of the twentiety century and I did not see "myself" portrayed in any of these chapters. Maybe I did not "live" with his crowd. The author, a feature writer and editor for the Washington Post, uses a telegraphic type of prose which sometimes becomes annoying. Generally speaking, I did not enjoy the book. It was not what I expected.

I first experienced these stories when they were published in The Washington Post, and they are ten times better the next time around. Moments in time are captured through sights, sounds and smells descriptive enough to take me back to a time when I wasn't even alive yet. One word - "WOW"!