1920

by Eric Burns

Overview

The Roaring Twenties is the only decade in American history with a widely-applied nickname, and our fascination with this era continues. But how did this surge of innovation and cultural milestones emerge out of the ashes of The Great War? No one has yet written a book about the decade’s beginning. Acclaimed author Eric Burns investigates the year of 1920, which was not only a crucial twelve-month period of its own, but one that foretold the future, foreshadow the rest of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. Burns sets the record straight about this most misunderstood and iconic of periods. Despite being the first full year of armistice, 1920 was not, in fact, a peaceful time—it contained the greatest act of terrorism in American history to date. And while 1920 is thought of as staring a prosperous era, for most people, life had never been more unaffordable. Meanwhile, African Americans were putting their stamp on culture and though people today imagine the frivolous image of the flapper dancing the night away, the truth was that a new kind of power had been bestowed on women, and it had nothing to do with the dance floor . . . From prohibition to immigration, the birth of jazz, the rise of expatriate literature, and the original Ponzi scheme, 1920 was truly a year like no other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987729
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	05/15/2015
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Eric Burns, a former NBC News correspondent and Today Show pundit, appears regularly as a commentator for Entertainment Tonight and hosts A&E's Arts & Entertainment Revue. He was the former host of Fox News Watch and has won an Emmy for media criticism. He is the author of Infamous Scribblers and The Spirits of America and lives in Westport, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Part 1 1

Chapter 1 "Two Sheets of Flame" 3

Chapter 2 Homeland Security 17

Part 2 37

Chapter 3 The Long, Black Night of the Spirits 39

Chapter 4 Resolutions and Sentiments 58

Chapter 5 Civil Wrongs 69

Chapter 6 The Robber Barons and Their Serfs 88

Chapter 7 The Beginning of Ponzi's Dream 104

Part 3 123

Chapter 8 The Ignoble Experiment 125

Chapter 9 Planning Parenthood 138

Chapter 10 The End of Ponzi's Scheme 160

Chapter 11 The Closed Door in the White House 175

Chapter 12 On the Air 191

Chapter 13 The Ohio Gangsters 200

Part 4 223

Chapter 14 The Investigation 225

Chapter 15 Uproar in the Arts 238

Chapter 16 The "Jass" Age 274

Chapter 17 The Flapper 296

Epilogue 303

Acknowledgments 309

Bibliography 313

Notes 323

Index 339

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/02/2015
Burns (Invasion of the Mind Snatchers) takes readers on a thorough tour of the upheavals and events of the year when “the Roaring Twenties first began to roar.” More than a “preview of a decade,” 1920 was “a preview of the entire century and even the century to follow.” In particular, Burns focuses on the beginning of Prohibition, the passing of the 19th Amendment, the popular explosion of jazz, and the rise and fall of Charles Ponzi. He also touches upon corruption in the White House, the Teapot Dome Scandal, and the radical inequality of wealth distribution. The railroads, radio, and Planned Parenthood all saw development in 1920; the urban population overtook the rural for the first time. Burns leaps from one captivating topic to the next, displaying his expertise and sometimes drawing from his previous books to bring these trends and events to life. It’s an entertaining and informative look at a pivotal period, kicking off “a time of excitement, excess and enthusiasm” and “a century’s worth of turmoil and jubilation, irrationality and intrigue, optimism and injustice.” Burns makes it possible to recognize the century to come in this intimate study of a single year, and the result is downright fascinating. Agent: Linda Kenner, Linda Kenner Literary Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Lively. Burns convincingly dispels a number of popular beliefs, including the idea that the 'ignoble experiment' of Prohibition was solely responsible for the birth of organized crime in America. He also finds parallels with many issues and 'civil wrongs' still running through our landscape: terrorism, immigration, women's rights, political corruption, and tabloid culture.

The New York Times Book Review

Extremely readable. Burns’s vigorous narrative is rich in genuinely engaging anecdote. He so clearly appreciates history’s sweep.

The Los Angeles Times

Burns proves that a year can hold a reader's attention and then some, with the year bringing on the fiasco that was Prohibition, jazz, the beginning and end of Ponzi's great scheme, and so much more. People with such characters as Marcus Garvey, William James, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Warren G. Harding, and with such events as the first-ever broadcast of presidential elections, Agatha Christie publishing her first book, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution being passed, 1920 makes history vibrant, exciting and palpably important. Entertaining and highly readable.

Booklist

Burns’s territory stretches far and wide across the realms of politics, Prohibition, pop culture and more: communists,
suffragettes, Teapot Dome, birth control, the radio. He skillfully builds portraits of such figures as con artist Charles Ponzi, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and crusading U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
He brings to light events that have probably received scarce attention in standard school curricula. An eminently readable, informative book.

The Washington Post

Burns delivers history with flair and vividness.

The Wall Street Journal

Covers one of the most dynamic periods of American history. A fine review of the new kinds of power emerging among women and minorities of the times, and the concurrent events that made the 1920s so significant.

Midwest Book Review

In picking the one that set off the fabled Roaring Twenties, former NBC correspondent and 'Fox News Watch' host Eric Burns has really hit the mother lode. Like all good writers, though, Burns does not allow the confines of his chosen year to be a straitjacket. Burns shines a valuable light on the beginnings of domestic terrorism in the United States, a too little remembered chapter in our history, which continues to resonate.

The Washingtonian

Burns builds upon existing scholarship to explain the significance of this one year in an accessible way for non-academic readers.

Choice

A
roaring read, a thorough and thoughtful appraisal of a single year in our past and all its implications for our future.

BookReporter

A work of genuine historical research, colorful personality, intellectual sophistication, heft, and durable interest.

Vanity Fair

03/15/2015
Burns's (Infamous Scribblers; The Spirits of America) slim volume strikes the reader with a wealth of information on the events that made 1920 such a significant year in the history of modern America. Each chapter highlights a notable event during that year, reviewing the moments leading up to the cultural and political changes that rocked the country and laid the foundation for years to come. From the Wall Street bombing to Prohibition, the birth of Jazz to the availability of birth control, Burns shifts from one moment to another without pause. At times the narrative feels rushed, as though there is too much information to be entirely satisfying, but the impending sense of change may very well be the author's intent in leading the reader from one event to the next. This well-researched work reveals an oft-forgotten past and sheds light on the misconceptions that mar modern perceptions of 1920. VERDICT Casual readers and beginning researchers interested in early 20th-century American history and culture will find this title worthwhile. Those interested in the 1920s might also want to consider Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927.—Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.

Library Journal

★ 2015-01-17
In a fascinating work about a remarkable year, former NBC News correspondent Burns (Invasion of the Mind Snatchers: Television's Conquest of America in the Fifties, 2010, etc.) shows us what put the roar in the Roaring '20s.The end of World War I brought reactions in the form of anarchy, the birth of jazz, the first Ponzi scheme, Prohibition, women's suffrage and the birth of "mass media." Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, fought the Red Scare against the likes of Sacco and Vanzetti and the most notorious anarchist, Luigi Galleani, who swore by the "propaganda of the deed." Their work would lose effectiveness as their agents were diverted to enforce Prohibition, which caused its own problems. The Anti-Saloon League was the first of the special interest groups, and Prohibition cost organized crime its organization, as it became a growth industry to provide unregulated, and often lethal, liquor to the masses. The election of Warren Harding in 1920 was the first in which women voted and the first time returns were broadcast on radio. It also brought the "Ohio Gang" into Washington, a group who imported Canadian liquor by the trainload, sold Teapot Dome and ran cons that Ponzi, who made millions in a few short months, would have loved. There was also extensive birth and growth. The migration of blacks to the North looking for work brought the Ku Klux Klan in their wake, but they also brought jazz and other cultural elements. Jazz brought men like Louis Armstrong to Chicago and then New York and Harlem. The Harlem Renaissance was spurred not only by jazz, but also by literature—by Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes and countless others. Burns follows it all with verve. In this delightfully readable book, the author expertly shows how those affected by the Great War linked together, nourished each other and really did change the world.

Kirkus Review

Extremely readable. Burns’s vigorous narrative is rich in genuinely engaging anecdote. He so clearly appreciates history’s sweep.

The Los Angeles Times

Burns proves that a year can hold a reader's attention and then some, with the year bringing on the fiasco that was Prohibition, jazz, the beginning and end of Ponzi's great scheme, and so much more. People with such characters as Marcus Garvey, William James, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Warren G. Harding, and with such events as the first-ever broadcast of presidential elections, Agatha Christie publishing her first book, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution being passed, 1920 makes history vibrant, exciting and palpably important. Entertaining and highly readable.

Booklist

"Lively. Burns convincingly dispels a number of popular beliefs, including the idea that the 'ignoble experiment' of Prohibition was solely responsible for the birth of organized crime in America. He also finds parallels with many issues and 'civil wrongs' still running through our landscape: terrorism, immigration, women's rights, political corruption, and tabloid culture.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Burns’s territory stretches far and wide across the realms of politics, Prohibition, pop culture and more: communists, suffragettes, Teapot Dome, birth control, the radio. He skillfully builds portraits of such figures as con artist Charles Ponzi, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and crusading U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. He brings to light events that have probably received scarce attention in standard school curricula. An eminently readable, informative book.” —Washington Post

From the Publisher