One Summer: America. 1927

by Bill Bryson

Hardcover, 2013

Call number

973.91 BRY

Collection

Publication

Random House Audio, Edition: Unabridged

Description

History. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML:A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book A GoodReads Reader's Choice In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life. The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin â??Shipwreckâ?ť Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve daysâ??a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true â??talking picture,â?ť Al Jolsonâ??s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.      All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member etxgardener
I love Bill Bryson's books and this one does not disappoint. Although, not a scholarly historian, Bryson certainly does his homework and writes in such a breezy style that I find myself remembering more from his books than I do from more academic texts. In this latest effort Bryson focuses on the
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events of the summer of 1927; a summer that encompassed Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, Babe Ruth's record shattering home run season, the great Mississippi flood, beginning the work on Mt. Rushmore, the end of Ford's Model T, the release of The Jazz Singer, and Al Capone's zenith of power as a gangster.

With a great eye for detail, along with a fondness for quirky cultural ephemera, Bryson makes the 1920's come alive. And while this may not have been his intent, he also illustrates why the "good old days" weren't so good, by pointing out that the per capita murder rate was much higher than it is today, that capital crimes were rarely solved, let alone the criminal brought to justice; that diseases that today are easily cured were fatal and that blatant prejudice against practically anyone who wasn't a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant was pretty much the accepted norm.

Still, the summer of 1927 was the summer when America truly stepped out of the shadow of Europe and started running the world, and Bryson gives us all a ringside seat to the events that made that happen.
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LibraryThing member PRusso
Amazing book! If this had been a high school history text, I might have become a history major.

One interview I read with Bryson said he only wanted to write a book about Babe Ruth, since Bryson's a big baseball fan. When he discovered that the Lindberg flight was the same summer as Ruth's homerun
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record, he decided to include both events.

But then how could he leave out prohibition, Sacco and Vanzetti, Al Capone, "talking" pictures and so much more? Clearly, the man stumbling on a goldmine in his research. Very readable; hard to put down.
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LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
With Bill Bryson, a lack of focus is actually an asset. He is always at his best when he is allowed to ramble in his books, moving from one topic to another, wherever his interests take him. “One Summer: America 1927” (2013) is just such a book.

So much was going on in America during the summer
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of 1927 that Bryson is free to ramble at will, turning up fascinating stories and trivia wherever he turns. This was the summer Babe Ruth hit 60 homes runs (and Lou Gehrig almost as many), Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, Gene Tunney beat Jack Dempsey, Henry Ford introduced the Model A, Al Capone became the most powerful man in Chicago, Walt Disney introduced Mickey Mouse to the world, silent movies reached their peak with “Wings” just as talkies burst upon the scene, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed and on and on.

And so Bryson wanders from flagpole sitters to the severe flooding that covered much of the Midwest in water that summer to the invention of hot dogs to flappers to Prohibition. He tells us that Babe Ruth spent his first paycheck on a bicycle. The IQ test was designed to determine stupidity, not intelligence. The Rockettes were originally called the Roxyettes after Roxy Rothafel, founder of the Roxy theaters.

There is never a dull moment reading these nearly 500 pages. It makes one wonder what someone like Bryson might someday be able to write about the wild year 2020, with the impeachment of one president, the scandal uncovered in the administration of the previous president and the virus that shut down not just the country but the entire world. Bryson himself is too close to these events, hardly objective enough to do them justice. But 90 years from now, give or take, some writer will give it a go and amaze readers with the wonder of it all. Let's hope this writer will be the equal of Bill Bryson.
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LibraryThing member dickmanikowski
Bill Bryson is amazing. He consistently produces nonfiction books with absolutely fascinating details. In this one, he focuses on America during the summer of 1927, which happened to feature an astounding number of significant events. Repeatedly coming back to the two dominant cultural icons of the
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period (Charles Lindberg, who became the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo and couldn't handle the overwhelming public adulation that followed him everywhere, and Babe Ruth, who had probably the best season in baseball history and absolutely doted on his celebrity), he examines such varied phenomena as Prohibition, the cult of personality that surrounded mobster Al Capone, entertainment (the premier of what's popularly considered to be the first talking movie and the premier of Jerome Kern's "Showboat," which changed Broadway musicals forever), the strange presidency of Calvin Coolidge, and the nation's fear of anarchists and communists. And throughout it all there was a deeply disturbing thread of eugenics.
It's a great read.
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LibraryThing member Renzomalo
A rare "5" from this old curmudgeon. A wonderful read and one that again makes one wonder why all history professors don't (or can't) relate their subject material in a way that both David McCullough and Bill Bryson to with such ease and alacrity. An absolute pleasure to read, its only drawback
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being an annoying tendency to keep one awake reading when sleep is desperately need.

Immersing me in the summer of 1927, I gained a long sought perspective on the stories my father told me of the great Babe Ruth, the Lindberg flight, Cleveland's Terminal Tower, and the indomitable heavyweight, Jack Dempsey. Growing up – and especially as a know-it-all teenager – I thought all this was just hot air, that nothing they did when my father was ten years old (he was born in 1917) could possibly compare to what was being done in the 1960s. Wrong! What a time it was and what a summer. Good grief Charlie Brown!

Again, five starts for Bill Bryson's "One Summer: America 1927. Caution, don't start reading at night, just sayin...
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LibraryThing member ablueidol
Tour centre force of America in 1927 told in and around the first successful crossing of the Atlantic . Usual quota of quirky facts woven into stories covering economic, financial, political sporting etc events. The central point is this was when America took economic and cultural control away from
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Europe long before the reality of political hegemony in the 1940's

He also tackles the challenging fact that many of the USA elite in all fields and much of Jo public was racist and casual believers in eugenics in ways that suggest Nazis beliefs were radical extensions of common culture and 'scientific'' beliefs rather then the isolated extremism that became the accepted account of them after the war.
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LibraryThing member zzshupinga
Review copy provided by publisher

One summer. One third of the year. Just over a hundred days. You wouldn't think that the world could change that much during that time....but you'd be wrong. The summer of 1927 changed the world. Charles Lindbergh, an unknown pilot, became the first man to fly
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nonstop across the Atlantic in late May of 1927. And that was just the beginning. Babe Ruth was beginning his quest to break the home run record, which he would do later that year with sixty. The first true “talking picture,” The Jazz Singer featuring Al Jolson, changes the movie industry forever. The Great Mississippi Flood that caused widespread disaster and panic that affected over 700,000 people. Al Capone continues his empire with a string of murders and corruption. And the stage is set for the Great Depression.

This is a year that changed the world and Bill Bryson captures every event, the people involved, and the strange occurrences with a drop of humor, an eye for detail, and his ability to tell a deft and moving story. Reading Bryson's latest book is like sitting down at the table with you favorite uncle and a few of his friends. You know the ones that know a little bit about everything, have met everyone, and love telling a good story. Bryson introduces us to every event, every person, and everything that was of interest or weirdness for that year ranging from baseball to flights to fights to gangsters and more. Even better is that Bryson ties everything together. You'll see connections that you never though about before, pieces that fit just right in the course of this book.

There are just so many different stories that you could tell from this book, so many things that changed. I could write for pages and never be able to tell everything, even the favorite parts. But, for everything that happened though, Lindbergh is at the heart of this book. His flight kicked off this amazing year and created a firestorm throughout the world. His flight, his story, introduces us to media frenzy's, sparked innovations in the aviation industry among others including the movies, and more. Bryson expertly weaves all of this together expertly, showing us how things are connected and how this summer...this one summer in 1927 catapulted the United States to new heights in the world.

I've been a fan of Bryson's since a friend introduced me to a "Walk in the Woods" and I haven't regretted a moment since. Being able to reread his books is like talking to an old friend. And reading new ones is like being introduced to another friend in a tight group. If you're a fan of Bryson, a fan of history...heck it doesn't matter what you are, pick up this book. You won't regret it for a moment. 5 out of 5 stars.
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LibraryThing member NellieMc
Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors - I have all his books and I might say that one of them The Thunderbolt Kid made me laugh as hard as any book, and his science book taught me as much about physics as any of my teachers, and more enjoyably. And this book demonstrates many of his finer
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qualities - beautiful writing style, great research, ability to take factual events and make them into an enthralling story, and the creative intertwining of many stories - without confusing the reader. But I can't give him a final star - where did the sense of humor goes? There's little of it here and,in some cases (for example, when discussing Herbert Hoover) he seems to demonstrate a bit of meanness. That's not Bryson's style and I find it disconcerting.
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LibraryThing member Davidgnp
I read every Bill Bryson book as soon as I can, and can always rely on him providing me with an informative, entertaining and rewarding read. All three elements are here in this absorbing profile of 1920s America. The book focuses on the people who were making history in the nation at that time -
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from Charles Lindbergh and a subordinate cast of aviators to sporting heroes Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, from reluctant President Calvin Coolidge and the eccentric industrialist Henry Ford to the murderous lovers Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray and racketeer Al Capone.

This is popular history written with Bryson's characteristically infectious enthusiasm (I always imagine him as a kid rapt among the pages of an illustrated children's encyclopaedia) and with the deft touch of a master. His style is journalistic, but that is to praise not degrade it, for it is journalism of the highest quality.

Absent from Bryson's recent publications are the warm-hearted and humorous reflections on personal experience which are central to the enjoyment of his earlier travel books and his Thunderbolt Kid memoir. Impossible here as he is dipping into a period that preceded his own, but I hope he has not entirely abandoned his own life as material - there we see Bill Bryson at his incomparable best.
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LibraryThing member drmaf
Just a fantastic, absorbing read. Bryson draws in an incredibly diverse collection of events and characters to illustrate one amazing summer in American history. The book is more or less built around Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth, and their stories are weaved through events covering politics,
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cinema, crime and punishment, sport, aviation, economics and natural disaster. Its a roller-coaster ride, as Bryson flits from one to another, frequently swooping off in tangents, but it is endlessly absorbing. The research that has gone into this book is formidable, but Bryson refuses to be weighed down by dry fact regurgitation. He simply does not stay in one place long enough to allow the story to get boring. I've never read a book quite like this before, but its certainly among the best books I've read in recent years. More, please.
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LibraryThing member Judy_AA
A fabulous breakneck look at America in the summer of 1927. Wrapped loosely around the careers of Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth, this delightful account of a short but dramatic period plays off Bryson's strength as a teller of history through biography and anecdote. Well-researched, ceaselessly
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fascinating, Bryson encapsulates the best and the worst of society through humorous and blunt descriptions of some of America's most influential, from Al Capone to Henry Ford. This is not one of Bryson's uproariously funny books - there is very little humor to be found in eugenics, political corruption and paranoia - but it is penned in his usual "sit down and let me tell you a story" style. Four stars because the last chapter seemed to ooze to a close rather than ring shut. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Stbalbach
A cast of characters small and large, famous in their day but mostly forgotten now, Bryson helps us to remember what it was like to be our (great) grandparents. Bryson mined newspaper headlines and carries the reader along as if living out the weeks of the summer, experiencing the change in moods
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and excitement as it happened. It's not exactly a new approach, Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (1931) did much the same, though without the hindsight of 80 years (Bryson mentions this book). 80 years is a perfect time to revisit an era, not too old to be academic, yet not too uncomfortably close, everyone who lived the era is gone four generations on. Though I knew it intellectually I gained a much deeper understanding of the impact Lindbergh had on the global psyche - airplanes were no longer curiosities or science fiction possibilities, people realized that in their lifetime they would travel vast distances in the blink of an eye, and they were right. It would be like if someone proved affordable space travel to Mars, space would suddenly be open to possibility in the lives of ordinary people. Another aspect I found fascinating was train travel in the era, with thousands of private railroads and labyrinthine trail schedules and connections. Well the details go on and on, the book is loaded with trivia for better and worse, but with Bryson telling it, who cares. Well worth the read or listen (Bryson is a talented narrator too).
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LibraryThing member marti.booker
Three and a half stars, really, but I didn't love it enough to rate 4. Nifty info, just not really arranged in a way that made for easy reading-- a chapter about one person would segue into another person's story without any real connection. That sort of thing worked well in "Son of the Morning
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Star" but just didn't have the same coloring and humor of that volume (or, really, as much of Mr. Bryson's typical humor, either. It was too serious, perhaps.) Still , I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. I just won't be re-reading it.
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LibraryThing member browner56
And what a summer it was. Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean and forever changed the course of aviation history. Babe Ruth and his Yankee teammates hit home runs and won games at a prodigious pace and forever changed the way the National Pastime was
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played. Al Jolson starred in the first widely distributed “talkie” which brought the American voice to the world for the first time and forever changed the entertainment business. Decisions were made by international banking authorities that led directly to the stock market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Further, the activities of myriad other characters, including Al Capone, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, Clara Bow, Sacco and Vanzetti, Calvin Coolidge, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, and Admiral Byrd, were prominent in the public eye.

In One Summer: America, 1927, Bill Bryson departs from his usual approach to writing clever and wry travelogues to bring us a wonderful account of the events that defined one of the most memorable periods in American history. The book is full of detailed narratives—in fact, at almost 500 pages, perhaps too detailed—of notable people who lived at a time just out of memory for most of us alive now. Bryson makes the interesting decision of organizing the book into monthly sections, from May through September, which means that several of the stories (e.g., Babe Ruth’s pursuit of the home run record) play out over several chapters. I did not find this to be overly distracting, but it did create discontinuities in some of the individual tales, particularly those that required considerable “backfill” to create a proper context (e.g., Sacco and Vanzetti trials and convictions that lead to their execution, Henry Ford’s development of the modern automobile industry). Nevertheless, One Summer is an enlightening and entertaining look at one remarkable season in the United States that did nothing less than change the history of the world.
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LibraryThing member Schmerguls
This is the fifth Bryson book I have read and is as good or better than any of them. He is often laugh-out-loud funny, and did considerable research--not scholarly but sort of skimmingly. There are no footnotes and the source notes don't pretend to be informative, though there is an extensive
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bibliography. He discusses at length Lindbergh, but wisely points out what a flawed man he was (including a mention of his 5 German bastards: something Scott Berg as late as 1999 knew nothing about). Also a lot on Babe Ruth and the 1927 Yankees, and on Sacco and Vanzetti. amd on the Mississippi flood of 1927, and on the weird personalities of Coolidge and Hoover, as well as teasingly interesting comments on plays and movies and books of 1927. Often the way Bryson tells things is very funny, and the book is a joy to read even while one wishes it were more precise and detailed and more carefully resourced.
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LibraryThing member maneekuhi
Here are some of the other characters and subjects in this excellent pop history of 1927 - Jack Dempsey, Al Capone, murderess Ruth Snyder, Sacco and Venzetti, Prohibition, Calvin Coolidge, Henry Ford, Herbert Hoover, the KKK, Prohibition, talkies, Mt. Rushmore. And lots more. Ruth and Lindbergh are
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"anchors", the text keeps coming back to them whereas most of the others are treated to anywhere from a few paragraphs to several pages. And Bryson did not limit himself to just the summer on 1927 - where it made sense he added background from previous years and/or let us know what history had in store for subsequent times. There are many amusing anecdotes and a number of "hey, I didn't know that". I enjoyed the book very much and will give it to a number of friends as a holiday gift. My only criticism of the book is an epilogue that addresses "whatever became of". I found it rather boring with the exception of the passing of a pilot who returned to a crashed plane only to perish when it subsequently exploded, and the death of the gentleman who died after tripping over a sleeping cow in a pasture one night.
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LibraryThing member 66usma
If you like history and obscure historical fact, then you should enjoy this work by Bill Bryson. The book is an easy read and gives you some insight into an evolutionary period in American history with regard to technological advances such as flight, cinema graphic sound, and television. It also
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discusses characters such as Charles Lindberg , Babe Ruth, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge , Lou Gehrig to name a few as the country enjoys prosperity during Prohibition while on the precipice of the Great Depression.
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LibraryThing member annbury
Someone once said "the past is foreign country; they do things differently there", and Bill Bryson's excursion to the America of 1927 shows how true that is. He drapes his story around Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. The summer began with the race to make the crossing (a race in which Lindbergh
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was by no means alone), proceeded with a storm of adulation that enveloped Lindbergh, and dwindled away with Lindbergh's three-month, 48-state tour in the Spirit of St. Louis. Along the way a whole lot else happened, and Bryson tells us about plenty of it -- Ruth's best year, Coolidge's "choice" not to run, the Mississippi floods, various murders, central bank choices that may have led to the the Depression, radio, the Dempsey/Tunney fight, and on and on. It is indeed entertaining, and it shows how much America has changed in some ways -- the country in 1927 was more innocent, but also more pleased with itself, and more racist. People died younger, on balance, and people's lives improved from year to year. This is an entertaining read, and you will learn a good many things (some of them very funny) while reading it. I could wish for a little less flying and a little more politics (Bryson is great on political portraits) but that's personal preference.
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LibraryThing member TheWasp
1927 held many key moments in American History and Bill Bryson rollicks from one interesting event to another. Charles Lindberg, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Al Capone, Presidents, Talking movies, Mississippi floods, headline criminal cases and more., all combine to make this an informative and
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enjoyable read
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LibraryThing member LibrarianMaven
This is another great book by Bill Bryson, focusing on the unexpectedly interesting summer of 1927 in the United States- it was the summer than Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, the best summer of Babe Ruth, and much more. The tone lacks Bryson's trademark side-splitting humor, but maintains interest
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throughout. I'd suggest this to readers looking for light nonfiction or light history.
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LibraryThing member repb
The research that had to have gone into this book must have been overwhelming (even though he admits his two children did a lot of it). It is a fascinating compilation of information about our American history of 1927 - including some very familiar characters: Charles Lindbergh, and some not so
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familiar: Philo T. Farnsworth. Through it all Bryson keeps his good humor apparent and helps make this ambitious work a wonderful read. My first five star in some time.
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LibraryThing member nilbett
I usually get bogged down with boring documentaries, but this book is written so well it kept me totally interested to the end. I found it amazing that so much happened in 1927. It was certainly Americas peak time in everything; a time of great discovery and adventure. A very enjoyable book indeed.
LibraryThing member St.CroixSue
Bryson can turn relatively uninteresting historical facts and events in something alive with myriads of interconnections. Although it is rather long, this held my interest and by the end of the book I had an entirely different feel for our nation and the changes and challenges that it faced during
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the decade of the 20’s. I did not want this one to end.
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LibraryThing member Tahleen
I love my Bill Bryson, but this one was a bit disjointed for me. Still, the audio was extremely enjoyable; I could listen to him talk about anything.
LibraryThing member Bellettres
This entertaining history focuses on Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth, but includes MANY other important people and events of the title summer, from Sacco and Vanzetti to the effects of Prohibition, from Calvin Coolidge to the Mississippi River flood. It's fascinating, it's enlightening, it's
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eminently readable history. I loved it!
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Awards

Audie Award (Finalist — History — 2014)
British Book Award (Shortlist — 2013)

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