One Summer One Summer

One Summer

America, 1927

    • 4.2 • 516 Ratings
    • $14.99
    • $14.99

Publisher Description

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book
A GoodReads Reader's Choice

In One Summer Bill Bryson, one of our greatest and most beloved nonfiction writers, transports readers on a journey back to one amazing season in American life.


The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.
     All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2013
October 1
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
528
Pages
PUBLISHER
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
13.2
MB

Customer Reviews

Amlynnka ,

One Summer America 1927

Bill Bryson writes with a droll humor that makes just about any topic or tangential topic very interesting and of course it's filled with laugh out loud passages

Megwal ,

Great Book

This was a very fine read about an important era in America's history. Bryson does a great job of tying stories together with interesting facts.

Emmet Aloysius ,

Enjoyable & Informative

My first book by Bryson and I will look into some of his other works based on this book. I would have enjoyed it more if I had not recently read the biography of Charles Lindbergh who figures prominently in this book. Bryson includes many funny and interesting details about major evensts. Overall a good read...EAF

More Books by Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods A Walk in the Woods
1998
A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition A Short History of Nearly Everything: Special Illustrated Edition
2005
The Body The Body
2019
A Short History of Nearly Everything A Short History of Nearly Everything
2003
In a Sunburned Country In a Sunburned Country
2000
At Home At Home
2010

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