ONE SUMMER AMERICA 1927

 Authour : Bill Bryson

Publisher : Doubleday, 2013, Pages 557 + 16 pages of  b&w photographs

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Excerpts :

( ) One evening just before Easter 1927, the wooden scaffolding around the brand new Sherry-Netherland Apartment Hotel caught fire. Crowds flocked to Fifth Avenue to watch the blaze, the biggest in years in the city. At thirty-eight storeys, it was the tallest residential building ever erected, visible twenty miles away, the scaffolding covering the top fifteen storeys, Water from firemen’s hoses could reach only third or fourth storey. Fortunately the building was unfinished and unoccupied. Burning scaffolding up to fifty feet long fell from a height of five hundred feet, on the road and on to roofs of neighbouring buildings, setting four of them alight. By 10 pm the crowd grew to about hundred thousand. Seven hundred policemen were brought in to keep order. Some wealthy people took rooms in the Plaza Hotel across the street and held impromptu “fire room parties”.

( ) The 1920’s was possibly the peak decade for reading in American life. Soon it was to be overtaken by the distraction of radio. American publishers produced 110 million books, more than ten thousand separate titles; double that of ten years ago. The book clubs had just made their debut, with very successful Book-of-the-month founded in 1926. Authors were venerated in a way not possible now. People came from miles around just to look at a popular author. Magazines boomed, Reader’s Digest, Time and New Yorker were started in this era.

( ) Macfadden came up with an even more inspired invention – the confession magazine – “True Story” which soon had monthly sales of 2.2 million in which all stories were candid; having in the words of a satisfied customer ‘with a yeasty undercover of sexual excitation’. When sued in 1927 by eight respectable citizens of Pennsylvania he had to pay up and admit that the stories were not in fact true at all and never had been.

( ) Trials in 1920’s America were often amazingly speedy. For sensational cases a carnival atmosphere descended on court houses. Newspaper men from as far away as Europe sent reporters. Lunch wagons set up on the road outside, souvenir sellers sold tiepins in shape of the case trivia. People, including wealthy & fashionable turned up daily and those not getting seats inside were content to stand outside and stare at the building.

( ) America the birthplace of aviation, was now hopelessly behind even the smallest European nation. In 1920’s it had fallen behind the rest of the world. As early as 1919, Europe had its first airline ‘KLM’, with daily flights between London and Paris with a thousand a week flying on that route alone. By mid 1920’s you could fly almost anywhere in Europe, Berlin to Liepzig, Amsterdam to Brussels, Paris to Constantinople, Prague to Bucharest. By 1927 France had nine airlines, British airlines flying about a million miles a year, Germany 1,51,000 passengers, and America – NIL air service.

( ) The Mississippi flood of 1927 was America’s most epic natural disaster, stretching 500 miles from southern Illinois to New Orleans, flooding 1,65,70,627 acres.  All along the river armies of men with shovels and sandbags shored up the defences, but up and down the river leeves popped like buttons off a tight shirt.   At one place a hundred black workers kept at their posts by men with rifles were swept to oblivion. Loss of cattle & even poultry, people made homeless was carefully recorded; but oddly number of human lives lost not recorded , maybe because the victims were black and poor.

( ) Herbert Hoover became the most derided president of the time, perhaps the least likeable hero America ever produced. He totally lacked in feeling for those he helped; refusing to visit any relief site or otherwise interact with unfortunate victims being helped. He ensured that every positive act associated with him was inflated t maximum importance and covered with a press release. During the war as part of his business operations Hoover illegally bought chemicals from Germany, not because they were unavailable in Britain, but simply because the German ones were cheaper. He saw no moral inconsistency in supporting the German economy even as Germany was bombing Britain. President Coolidge had no regard or rather withering disdain towards him.

( ) Cities during 1927 were compact and suburban sprawl had not yet happened. Travelling and sending goods was still by rail, paved highways were a rarity; and wherever built were considered an enchanting novelty.

( ) Prohibition was in its eighth year and was a spectacular failure. New York had more saloons than it had had before Prohibition. Drinking was so transparently prevalent that a visitor asked – ‘When is Prohibition to begin?’ Moral decline was evident everywhere, which anxious elders found alarming. Young women started adopting sordid habits. Nevada became famous for ‘quickie divorce’.

( ) In 1927, Americans were not terribly popular in Europe specially France. America’s insistence on being repaid in full, with interest, the $10 billion it had lent to Europe during the war (WW1). This seemed a bit too much to Europeans since all the money borrowed had been spent on American goods, so repaying it would mean that America profited twice from the same loan. Stones were thrown on American tour buses in Paris, and American parties sometimes found it hard to get served in cafes.

( ) Lindberg’s ‘Spirit of St Louis’ was little more than a flying fuel tank, with a lot of drag built in by jutting cylinders on its engine, many struts and guy wires and above all its fixed landing gear of two dangling wheels dragging through the wind. To maximize mileage every ounce of unnecessary weight was discarded, reportedly even the white margins of maps trimmed off. He became the first to cross the Atlantic nonstop on 21 May 1927. Within minutes the whole of America knew it and was in joyous delirium.

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My take: It’s a little hard to believe, but America in the 1920’s was much behind Europe where most of the important things were happening. Bill Bryson in his wit and humour presents America of the period 1920 to 1930 when things started to happen there; talking pictures, television, and an unknown aviator Lindbergh became the most famous man on earth. The book is entertaining and full of adventure.

Subject type : Historical happenings

Narrative Style : Descriptive and Entertaining

Readability : Excellent

Reader’s Interest : Excellent

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 Available at

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