Friday, May 16, 2014

Readalikes: If you liked May's selection . . .

If you liked Bill Bryson's One Summer: America 1927, then you might also enjoy these books and documentaries suggested by our discussion group members: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerarld; the recent film version of the novel directed by Baz Luhrmann and with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby; Ken Burns' documentaries Prohibition and Baseball; and the American Experience documentary Lindbergh.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

The jacket copy for One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson asks, "What happened in America in the summer of 1927? What didn't happen?" Bryson recounts the events of this giddy yet dark season just before everything changed with Black Tuesday in 1929 and The Great Depression of the 1930s. Among the many events of that summer, Charles Lindbergh made the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight and became a cult hero; Babe Ruth set a home run record; the Dempsey-Tunney boxing match drew over 150,000 spectators, Al Jolson filmed The Jazz Singer, the first "talking film"; Al Capone challenged Prohibition and the IRS challenged him; the Mississippi River basin flooded, leaving thousands of people homeless; anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed; the world's four most powerful bankers made a fateful decision that resulted in Black Tuesday and the Great Depression; and President Calvin Coolidge enjoyed a long vacation in South Dakota.

Bryson notes that "It is hard to imagine now, but Americans in the 1920s had grown up in a world in which most of the most important things happened in Europe. Now suddenly America was dominant in nearly every field--in popular culture, finance and banking, military might, invention and technology. The center of gravity for the planet was moving to the other side of the world . . . " Is there anything about the people and events Bryson describes that marks them as especially American? Is there something that links them together politically or culturally? And what comparisons and contrasts can you make between the 1920s and today in America politically, economically, and culturally? We began our discussions this year with George Packer's idea that "There have been unwindings every generation or two . . . Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion." Did One Summer leave you optimistic or pessimistic about our future as a nation?

A number of critics have said that One Summer is merely a collection of disparate anecdotes whose purpose is to amuse and that it lacks any real thesis or analysis. Do you agree? And even if this is an accurate assessment of the book, is it necessarily a problem?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, May 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.