by David E. Kyvig
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Product Description
The twenties and thirties witnessed dramatic changes in American life: increasing urbanization, technological innovation, cultural upheaval, and economic disaster. In this fascinating book, the prize-winning historian David Kyvig describes everyday life in these decades, when automobiles and home electricity became commonplace, when radio and the movies became broadly popular.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A fast read, like an 8th grade social studies text, 2008-11-04
This was a great read. I like how the author highlighted the social and the economic and the cultural changes that took place during these formative years in 20th century America. You read about the genius, yet uncompromising Henry Ford, who designed the Model T, and later the Model A, but failed in his bid to create a winning farm tractor (they kept tipping over backward).
You will also read about the greed and the heavy loans that banks gave out that led to the 1929 stock market crash. But you will also read about FDR's tremendous reforms: The creation of Social Security, the SEC, the FDIC, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was later struck down by the Supreme Court, but reintroduced in a different incarnation based on taxes), TVA, and many others.
I enjoyed reading about how American life changed with the advent of electric light in homes, which led people to read more. The chapters on marriage, divorce, and sexuality was also interesting.
This is a great book about the roaring Twenties and the depressing Thirties.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Learning from the first Great Depression (is GDII next?), 2008-10-31
If we don't learn from the past....
This book is well-written: it is not a dry, plodding description of the Great Depression of the 30's and the decades before and after. The gaiety of the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition notwithstanding, is well-described, to the extent one can almost step into the post-WWI exhilaration. Only to be followed by financial disaster.
Then the crash of the stock market, explained so that even I, a non-financial-investments person, can comprehend the cause and effects. The daily life, which was what I initially sought to understand, was thoroughly examined from the popular attendance of the new talkies to the government programs initiated to alleviate the dire circumstances of so many people.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning from the past: a past that may resemble our future!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
bringing history to life, 2008-03-03
History is more than the story of big, important men making important decisions. Any worthy historical account needs to give insight into how the masses lived during a given time. This book accomplishes just that and tells the reader how day to day life was, for most Americans, from 1920-1940. For example, in 1920 less than half of Americans had electricity or running water and the situation only gradually improved. Important facts like that are left out from most other accounts, which is why this is a must-read for anyone who wants to know about the subject. To understand the World War II generation, this book should be mandatory. I used this book as a reference when I wrote my own book. See:
Alcohol, Boat Chases, and Shootouts! How the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Fought Rum Smugglers and Pirates (Part I: 1919-1924)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Daily Life review, 2008-01-18
Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression
This is a well-done book. I study this period of US history and find this book an excellent part of that journey.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
 Not so much daily lives, 2007-01-03
My real interest in this book was to learn how ordinary people coped with life in a great depression. What interests me is in finding out how certain parts of society experienced it as I am sure the impact varies greatly.
This book - despite its title - clearly fails to answer this. Sure it tells me some of the reasons around the boom and bust, and some statistics on unemplyment, etc. But what I really wanted was the 'how they lived their lives' aspect that the title and blurb teased me with.
Despite my annoyance, I can't give this a 1 star (which is what it is worth to me) since it is a well written book and covers the topic well.
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