Monday, November 28, 2011
[Book Review] ONLY YESTERDAY: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen
Nonfiction/History
Originally published in 1931, Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: an Informal History of the 1920s examines the period from the end of World War I to the stock market crash of 1929. Allen’s work not only examines the major political and business leaders of the day but also looks at sports, movies, and the growth of advertising, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, Lindbergh’s flight and the popularity of the game Mah Jong, to paint a detailed portrait of the Jazz Age in
The book became an instant bestseller, selling a half million copies during its first year in print which was also one of the worst years of the Great Depression. The book was also a critical success which, along with its brilliant prose, makes Allen’s book an important milestone in the development of narrative non-fiction. The book reviewer Jonathan Yardley wrote that Allen’s Only Yesterday interpreted the 1920s “with intelligence and without sentimentality, and to write about it with grace, fluidity and wit.”
Wayne Dowdy, Business and Social Sciences Department
Labels: History, Nonfiction, Reviews by Wayne Dowdy
