The Modern Temper

An in-depth perspective of the transformative decade that was the American Jazz Age from the end of World War I to the stock market crash.[Dumenil] has captured the fire of this volcanic time and weaves together scores of social and political threads into an insightful overview. —Publishers WeeklyWhen most of us take a backward glance at the 1920s we may think of prohibition and the jazz age of movies stars and flappers of Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford of Lindbergh and Hoover—and of Black Friday October 29 1929 when the plunging stock market ushered in the great depression.But the 1920s were much more. Lynn Dumenil brings a fresh interpretation to a dramatic important and misunderstood decade. As her lively work makes clear changing values brought an end to the repressive Victorian era; urban liberalism emerged; the federal bureaucracy was expanded; pluralism became increasingly important to America''s heterogeneous society; and different religious ethnic and cultural groups encountered the homogenizing force of a powerful mass-consumer culture. The Modern Temper brings these many developments into sharp focus.