June 30, 2003
Miller (Theodore Roosevelt: A Life; FDR: An Intimate History; etc.) quite eloquently illuminates the United States as it existed under presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, using the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, with all its peaks and valleys during the 1920s, as the backbone of his narrative. But Miller's book is much more complex than a mere discussion of Fitzgerald or such related phenomena as the Lost Generation and the Jazz Age. In addition to events in the arts and sciences, Miller details bitter labor struggles, the rise of the reconstituted Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition. Woven into this text are vivid portrayals of such personalities as H.L. Mencken (who coined the famous phrase, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people") and the young, relatively unknown Franklin Roosevelt, dealing with the onset of polio. Miller's provocative prose dovetails such notables as Al Capone, evangelist Billy Sunday, birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger and aviator Charles Lindbergh. In addition to personalities, Miller is also keen to depict key trends and events, and, where appropriate, he notes them as distant mirrors of our own age. This is particularly Miller's ambition when it comes to the rampant stock market speculation of the 1920s and such corporate scandals as the Teapot Dome affair. In sum, this volume comprises an excellent chronicle of that turbulent, troubled and tempestuous decade called "the roaring '20s." Photos not seen by PW.
August 1, 2003
Miller, an accomplished journalist and historian (Theodore Roosevelt: A Life; FDR: An Intimate History), turns his attention to one of the pivotal decades of U.S. history, the 1920s. Like Frederick Lewis Allen's classic Only Yesterday, this too is an engagingly readable narrative history. But unlike Allen's well-regarded account, Miller's work benefits from 70 years of scholarship on the subject. Miller is thus able to provide a perspective on race relations and labor that Allen did not. He is also able to dispel some myths of the period, such as those surrounding the nomination of Warren G. Harding at the 1920 Republican convention. Between the lines, Miller sees the turn toward conservative politics, denial of festering social and economic issues, and moral excess as parallels to our own time. Based on solid scholarship, Miller's book is an eminently readable history and an excellent addition for public and undergraduate collections. In contrast, David J. Goldberg's Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s is more academic and more focused on issues of race and ethnicity. Highly recommended.-Daniel Liestman, Florida Gulf Coast Univ. Lib. Svcs., Fort Meyers
Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2003
Miller characterizes the 1920s as a decade full of drinking, dancing, hedonism, and crime. Miller first concentrates on the writer who captured the decade's insouciance and ennui in " The Great Gatsby," periodically revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald's self-destructive slide, then returning to recount the period's social and economic trends. Blacks moved north, women began voting, factories hummed, farms stagnated, stocks inflated, and speakeasies proliferated. Presiding over the turbulence, the five presidents of the period (Wilson through FDR) receive Miller's closest narrative attention, their reputations illustrated with telling anecdotes, such as Harding's signing a bill on a golf course. Considering this work's density of data and personalities from Klansmen to jazzmen to evangelists, Miller's structuring is notably skillful. A suave, entertaining survey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)