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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.915
EAN num: 9780306813795
ISBN number: 0306813793
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: July 27, 2004
Publishing house: Da Capo Press
Release Date: July 27, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 282633
Studio: Da Capo Press
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The images of the 1920s have been indelibly imprinted on the American imagination-from jazz, bootleggers, flappers, talkies, the Model T Ford, Babe Ruth, and Charles Lindbergh to the fight for women's right to vote, racial injustice, and the birth of organized crime.Nathan Miller has penned the ultimate introduction to the era. Publishing houses Weekly calls it 'an excellent chronicle of that turbulent, troubled, and tempestuous decade,' and Jonathan Yardley's Washington Post review proclaimed this the new classic history of the 1920s, replacing Frederick Lewis Allen's celebrated account.Using the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a backdrop, Miller describes the world of Calvin Coolidge, H. L. Mencken, Woodrow Wilson, and the Red Scare in extraordinarily accessible (and frequently witty) writing, New World Coming is destined to become the book we all turn to to recall one of the most beloved eras in American history.
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Rated by buyers -
This book is written by a journalist, and as you read it, that fact becomes more evident. And as a former journalist, I believe that's both good and bad.
Miller does a very nice job of telling the story of the 1920s. His research is extensive. He effectively sets the scene by describing the mid- to late-1910s, and his epilogue about the 1932 election is a nice way to end the book. I also loved the short biographical sketches that he wrote about all the key figures, from the politicians and writers to the crime bosses and sports stars. It is a very informative, easy-to-read account of this most fascinating decade.
The book is very thematic in that Miller spends most of the early part of the book on politics, from Harding to Coolidge. He then hits on one key aspect of the era's social history after another, including prohibition, immigration, religion, sports, art, etc. He later ties it together with the 1928 election and the Stock Market crash. It's impossible to read this book and not learn plenty about the period, unless you were already an expert.
The downside of Miller's journalist background is that, in writing the book like a massive feature/news story, he failed to include a central argument or theme. He opines a few times that the stereotypes of the 1920s are largely myths, and the title indicates that a case will be made for the decade as the time when the modern world really began to take shape. But I didn't find there to be a main theme. I just found it to be an enjoyable story of an interesting decade. And to be honest, that's OK with me.
Rated by buyers 
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Miller's book is so liberally biased it is untrustworthy. He has a simplistic liberals good, conservatives bad philosophy which he allows to slant his history. For instance, his section on the Scopes trial, contains many of the usual myths perpetrated about the trial, but Miller even adds an apocryphal ending. (Since he doesn't cite his sources well, I can't tell where he got it. ) He writes, "Bryan slumped in the witness chair after an hour and a half of this, his face heavy with sweat, muttering over and over again "Slurring the Bible . . . slurring the Bible" (249). It's a powerful image--it's also quite false. The transcripts to the Scopes trial are easy to find; therefore, there is no excuse for Miller's shoddy scholarship. Any decent historian should have checked his sources.
To demonstrate a complete lack of understanding the Scopes trial, Miller says that in the midst of the trial, "Darrow decided to put the anti-evolution law itself on trial" (248) Testing the anti-evolution law (actually a misnomer since the law did not forbid the teaching of evolution) was the purpose of the trial from its inception, long before Darrow came on board. Everyone on both sides understood that the purpose of the case was to test the law. That fact is basic to an understanding of the case.
However, it is not just Miller's factual errors, but his juvenile stereotyping of people that offends. He tries to make Darrow and Menchen into saints and demonizes Bryan. His history has little nuance. Students will not learn that the textbook in question taught racism and eugenics under the umbrella of evolution, and that that was Bryan's main motivation for fighting the teaching of the evolution of man. Bryan hated the effects of social Darwinism and eugenics so rampant at that time. Like most liberal historians, Miller hardly mentions the eugenics program that was being taught in high schools and colleges all over the United States.
Liberals who do not care about fairness or accuracy may like this book; those who want good history should look elsewhere.
Rated by buyers 
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I just finished this book and it is fast-paced, enjoyable and generally informative. But the authors obvious liberal political bias makes one question his objectivity and accuracy. For example, his comparison of Florence Harding to Hillary Clinton is laughable. Love and desire may have played a role in her decision to "stand by her man' but who can deny that greed and ambition played a larger role.
If one is able ignore the authors snide political interjections, the book is a fun read.
Rated by buyers 
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It's an ambitious project to render a history of America in the twenties in only four hundred pages, but Nathan Miller performs the task admirably. The rise of the automobile, big business, jazz, prohibition, Coolidge prosperity, Lindbergh...any of these subjects is worthy of its own book, but Miller touches on them with a deft hand, bringing them to life with wit and enough factual content to give the reader a basic understanding. The amount of important stories and memorable moments in that decade is impressive and Miller wonderfully weaves them together in a coherent and well crafted narrative ranging from national politics to the conditions of the average man.
I can't recommend this book more for anyone who wants an introduction to one of America's most remarkable and interesting decades.
Rated by buyers -
All decades are not created equal. In the twentieth century in America, a few stand out, perhaps none more so than the Twenties and the Sixties. Nathan Miller in this book argues, to my mind somewhat unconvincingly, that the Twenties was key in creating the modern world. In fact, he doesn't make his case. He makes a few comparisons between trends or events of that decade and today, but there is no sustained argument, certainly no clearly stated thesis, and in the end no major pay off. So, in a sense the goal implied in the subtitle of the book falls completely short of its promise. If one compares what Miller attempts to do with the Twenties with what David Halbertstam did with the Fifties, the effort does not come off very well. Halbertstam made his case in a way that Miller does not. Is the book therefore without value? By no means. This is, in fact, the finest existing survey of what happened in the Twenties, definitely surpassing Allen's famous ONLY YESTERDAY, which while reflective of the mood of the time lacked perspective as well as many facts.
By any standards, the Twenties stands out in American history. There were fewer major historical events than in other decades, but culturally few decades have witnessed the same degree of change. Only the Sixties can bear comparison in the past century. Miller points out that most people in the decade were far more conservative than the image of the period would suggest. But it was a period that was heaving with all kinds of social change and resistance to change. Social roles were being challenged to a degree never before seen, but there were also some remarkable right wing, reactionary forces. It was the great decade of popularity for the Ku Klux Klan, albeit one that was far more moderate than the Klan both of the past and the future (one of my family's legends is that my grandfather was briefly a member of the Klan during the Twenties, as were huge numbers of people before it became more radical in the thirties).
Miller is at his best when discussing the individuals who dominated the age. He is weaker when discussing the age's dominant ideas and trends. The history therefore feels at times more like a serial biography. Individuals like Fitzgerald, Harding, Coolidge, Lindbergh, Mencken, Hoover, Wilson, and Sanger play the major roles in the story. For the most part, one gets the sense that he has struck the right balance between the decades major figures. There were, however, two gargantuan absences: Will Rogers and Dashiell Hammett. The latter should not have been given a large treatment, but it was in the Twenties that Hammett created the detective stories that more or less gave birth to the hardboiled world that inspired film noir and a huge amount of modern cynical culture. If one is trying to write about where the modern world begins, in the world of literature Hammett is one of the key places. But the lack of space dedicated to Will Rogers is inexplicable and is the greatest weakness in the book. Miller quotes Rogers a couple of times, but he was the most popular individual of the decade, as widely read as Mencken, a popular movie stage, a dominant stage performer, and perhaps the most trusted man in America. In fact, if Lindbergh was the most revered American of the decade, Rogers was the most loved. You simply can't understand the Twenties if you don't understand the massive popularity of Will Rogers. One would have anticipated the kind of space for Rogers that Miller allots Mencken or Fitzgerald. I have no explanation for his omission. This is not mere nitpicking: it is the kind of mistake that can cause one to lose confidence in a writer. Nonetheless, this one gaff aside, Miller does a fine job of honing in on correct individuals.
I very much appreciated his treatment of Herbert Hoover. In the past few years we've heard a lot about moral character and the presidency. The truth is, there is virtually no connection between one's moral character and how good one performs as president. Franklin Roosevelt is almost universally regarded as one of our three great presidents, but he also possessed some definite moral flaws. John F. Kennedy was far from perfect, but showed definite potential to be a fine president had he lived. On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was not a strong president despite being one of the finest individuals to hold the office. Ditto Rutherford B. Hayes. And so also Herbert Hoover. Throughout his life Hoover was primarily a progressive focused on the public good, and has a public record second to almost no American president. Yet his blind and stubborn insistence on allowing the workings of the free market (contrary to popular bias, never a good thing to do) to take care of the Depression stands as one of the worst decisions made by any American political figure. Miller does a fine job of showing how otherwise capable and goodhearted Hoover was, and it ... Read More
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