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Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s ReviewThis engaging account of the 1920's is an especially remarkable book given the year it was written: 1931. With remarkable detachment and prose which has stood up to the test of time, Frederick Lewis Allen wrote about the 1920's just after the decade had ended. Writing in a voice that is half that of a journalist and half that of a historian, Allen covers everything from presidents and presidential politics, to prohibition, the economy, sweeping social changes, the coming of mass media through radio, syndicated columnists, and increased attendance in movie houses; the red scare, the rise of business and science in popular esteem, religion, and a variety of other cultural and social events and trends. The modern era, it could be argued, began on Armistice Day, 11/11/1918.
The trends and issues of the post-World War I decade resound with amazing familiarity today, at the dawn of the 21st Century. Through reading Allen's account the reader is reminded that McCarthyism that oft referred to "ism," was hardly the invention of McCarthy, nor was it unique to the late 1940's and 1950's. A red scare based on hysteria and fear proceeded "McCarthyism" by a good thirty years. The red scare that was brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution was ferocious in its intensity. Fanned by the winds of a handful of true radicals, the red scare that came immediately after the war was characterized by labor unrest, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the trampling of any ideas or books that had a hint of "Bolshevism," mass deportations of Communists (or suspected Communists), and the waiving of due process under law with mass arrests.
Allen says the big red scare faded quickly, as it became all too evident that there really wasn't much Communist or Bolshevik subversion to begin with. Also, the country was ready for The Next Big Thing. "Only Yesterday" details a series of manias that swept the country in the twenties. One of these manias was a revolution in morals. Here too, the reader of the year 2000 is reminded that the sixties and early seventies were not the only time period of a sexual revolution in twentieth-century America. The post-war decade of the twenties was a dramatic precursor to what came later, and an important breaking off point, for many at least, from Victorian mores.
Tired of Wilsonian idealism and weary from the First World War, American's were starved for a return to "normalcy." From Marion, Ohio, Warren Harding seemed like just the man to succeed Wilson. Harding was swept into the White House in what would be the beginning of twelve years of Republican rule from Pennsylvania Avenue. No great intellectual, Harding was a genial man and the country took to him. Meanwhile, as it would be revealed after his timely death, Harding ran one of the most corrupt administrations in the nation's history. The scandals came to light after Harding died and the moralistic (although not necessarily idealistic) Calvin Coolidge was just the man for the times. The "Coolidge Prosperity" is aptly named in that most of the 1920's were good times economically for all but a few sectors of the economy. Coolidge ran the country with a maxim of what was good for business was good for the country. If he had any ideology that was probably it.
The most capable of the three Republicans, or at least certainly the brightest, was Herbert Hoover, elected at the height of the Coolidge prosperity. Hoover was in office just over six months when the bubble burst The stock market-fueled by speculation-crashed, followed soon by a general economic collapse.
With the Scopes Trial, sports mania, and the introduction and popularity of radio, the nation went from one craze to the next. Whether it was anti-Bolshevism, or stock market mania, these were all national manias with the help of new forms of communication as well as new ways of mass manipulation by editors and announcers. Allen's "Only Yesterday" gives the reader a good feel for the events and trends of the 1920's, as seen by a man who had just lived through that decade.
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s OverviewProhibition. Al Capone. The President Harding scandals.The revolution of manners and morals.Black Tuesday.These are only an inkling of the events and figures characterizing the wild, tumultuous era that was the Roaring Twenties.Originally published in 1931, Only Yesterday traces the rise if post-World War I prosperity up to the Wall Street crash of 1929 against the colorful backdrop of flappers, speakeasies, the first radio, and the scandalous rise of skirt hemlines.Hailed as an instant classic, this is Frederick Lewis Allen's vivid and definitive account of one of the twentieth century's most fascinating decades, chronicling a time of both joy and terror--when dizzying highs were quickly succeeded by heartbreaking lows.
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