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.