Structures of the Jazz Age : mass culture, progressive education, and racial discourse in American modernism

This text charts the American cultural landscape of the twenties, which was populated by intellectuals and writers such as H.L. Mencken, Irving Babbitt, Dos Passos, Cather and Dreiser. It also includes an examination of the progressive educational philosophy of the time, the critique of mass culture and the cult of primitivism, as exemplified by figures such as Anzia Yezierska, Harry Leon Wilson and DuBose Heyward. The author aims to show how these different strands of thought were woven together in a way that helped to sustain Republican rule and an expanding economy, until the stock market crash of 1929.