Recreates the social, political, and economic scene of the 1920's in America

Only Yesterday

History

ALLEN, FREDERICK LEWIS

Americas

Harpercollins

The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1950 by Fredrick Lewis Allen - 1988 - First Torchbooks Edition

The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1950

Business & Money

Economics

Frederick Lewis Allen was one of the pioneers in social history. Best known as the author of Only Yesterday, Allen originated a model of what is sometimes called instant history, the reconstruction of past eras through vivid commentary on the news, fashions, customs, and artifacts that altered the pace and forms of American life. The Big Change was Allen's last and most ambitious book. In it he attempted to chart and explain the progressive evolution of American life over half a century. Written at a time of unprecedented optimism and prosperity, The Big Change defines a transformative moment in American history and provides an implicit and illuminating perspective on what has taken place in the second half of the twentieth century.Allen's theme is the realization, in large measure, of the promise of democracy. As against the strain of social criticism that saw America as enfeebled by affluence and conformity, Allen wrote in praise of an economic system that had ushered in a new age of well being for the American people. He divides his inquiry into three major sections. The first, 'The Old Order,' portrays the turn-of-the-century plutocracy in which the federal government was largely subservient to business interests and the gap between rich and poor portended a real possibility of bloody rebellion. 'The Momentum of Change' graphically describes the various forces that gradually transformed the country in the new century: mass production, the automobile, the Great Depression and the coming of big government, World War II and America's emergence as a world power. Against this background, Allen shows how the economic system was reformed without being ruined, and how social gaps began to steadily close.The concluding section, 'The New America,' is a hopeful assessment of postwar American culture. Allen's analysis takes critical issue with many common perceptions, both foreign and domestic, of American life and places remaining social problems in careful perspective. As William O'Neill remarks in his introduction to this new edition, The Big Change is both a deep and wonderfully readable work of social commentary, a book that gains rather than loses with the years.

Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1950

Greenwood Pub Group

Written in 1931, this new installment in the Wiley Investment Classics series offers a well-written historical and anecdotal account of the volatile stock market of the 1920s. It traces the rise of post World War I prosperity up to the crash of 1929 before a colorful backdrop that includes Al Capone, Prohibition, the first radio, and the rise and fall of the skirt length.

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's

wiley

Here, for the first time in one volume, are Frederick Lewis Allen's two classic studies of America in the early decades of the twentieth century. Only Yesterday and its sequel, Since Yesterday, are a look at the events, the personalities, the politics, and the manners and morals of the nation during a significant and turbulent era in history. 
Only Yesterday has been called "the best account of all that happened in the United States during the wonderfully wacky 1920s." It deals with that delightful decade from the Armistice in November 1918 to the panic and depression of 1929-30. Here is the story of Woodrow Wilson's defeat, the Harding scandals, the Coolidge prosperity, the revolution in manners and morals, the bull market and its smash-up. Allen's lively narrative brings back, revitalized and freshly interpreted, an endless variety of half-forgotten events and fashions, crazes and absurdities. He neglects neither the play of political, social, and economic forces in American life nor those tremendous trifles which immediately concerned ordinary people-the significance of short skirts, Eskimo pies, flagpole sitting. 
Since Yesterday, which is as gracefully written as its predecessor, picks up where the first book ends. Recapping the period of feverish stock market activity that preceded the Crash of 1929, it goes on to look at what happened in the decade that followed, from September 3, 1929, to September 3, 1939. Allen examines the Depression, the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the beginning of the New Deal, the Dust Bowl, the way Americans worked (and didn't work), how they played. He covers the fashions of the times, gangsterism, politics, unions, Hollywood, and a great deal more.

Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday: A Popular History of the '20s and '30s (Two Volumes in One)

Bonanza Books

Subtitled America Transforms Itself 1900-1950, this is a historical narrative (first published in 1952) describing the transformation which took place during the first 50 years of this century in the American way of life and what caused it. 7 cassettes.

The Big Change

Blackstone Pub

John Pierpont Morgan's ascent to financial power and use-or abuse--of it has been a subject of outspoken controversy. In 1901, Morgan formed U.S. Steel, which became the first billion-dollar corporation in the world and helped develop American resources. But he was widely criticized for backing the sale of obsolete carbines to the Union Army during the Civil War.

The Great Pierpont Morgan

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Since Yesterday

FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN ON J. PIERPONT MORGAN:"Pierpont Morgan was a man with whom I would have disagreed strongly on most political and economic issues if I had been his contemporary. To me he represented a trend in the direction of economic affairs which had to be altered fro the good of the country. But I am also convinced that he was a man great in character and force, whose immnse influence was in many respects salutary. What I have tried to do, therefore, has been to show what sort of man he really was; how his ideas developed out of his background and the traditions of the group to which he belonged, and out of his experience; how both his ideas and his actions conflicted wih those of others whose background and experience differed from his; and how affected by, the course of American history."

Historical

Dorset Pr

The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-50

Routledge

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Books by ALLEN, FREDERICK LEWIS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by ALLEN, FREDERICK LEWIS. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Only Yesterday

The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1950

Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1950

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's

Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday: A Popular History of the '20s and '30s (Two Volumes in One)

The Big Change

The Great Pierpont Morgan

Since Yesterday

The Great Pierpont Morgan

The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-50