The
year the world tilted
OneSummer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
Over
the last ten years or so I have been playing catch-up with Bill Bryson and his
books, and I have finally arrived at his 2013 offering.
It
is by far the best researched and most interesting of his books for many years
- a massive sweep through a short period of time, with carefully crafted
chapters piecing together the details of a summer of ninety years ago. My
knowledge of America of the 1920s was only sketchy, and after reading I was
amazed at the continent-shaking changes that all seemed to come together in one
summer. It is not a literary device to tell a story - Bryson does not have to,
because so many amazing events came to pass that it’s almost as if a decade of
events were compressed into a few short months.
Why
was 1927 so special? From a European vantage-point, it might not seem special
at all. One of the few startling things that happened on British shores was that
Cardiff City of Wales won the FA Cup. But across the Atlantic, from spring to
early autumn of the same year, every week seemed to offer another astonishing,
headline-busting moment.
CharlesLindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. His achievement was heralded in the
United States in a similar way to Hillary and Tenzing on Everest - except on a
monumental scale. He spent the summer being mobbed by unimaginably vast crowds
in every city in America. This one event is the one on which Bryson hangs much
of the rest of his book. It was a first for America. As he points out, it was a
sort of ‘first’ first for America. Until then, most advancements and
achievements had happened in Europe with Americans looking on admiringly. Now
Americans took the lead.
It
was the summer of the largest flood of the Mississippi, and the amazing
organisational skills of Herbert Hoover, who following his clean-up operation
after the First World War appeared to metaphorically roll up his sleeves again
and wade in to the flood waters, whilst a passive President sat and watched
from a distance.
It
was also the summer of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and stupendous baseball records
tumbling. Bryson writes with real skill and affection for these two American
heroes. The margins of their dominance is perhaps unmatched in any European
based sport.
What
else? Well, the late summer was the biggest boxing match of the century, JackDempsey and Gene Tunney.
‘The
Jazz Singer’, the first real ‘talkie’, appeared and caused a sensation.
Charles
Ponzi defrauded millions.
Two
Italian ‘anarchists’ went to the electric chair, with the nation knowing that
they probably did not do what they were convicted of.
It
was a time when innovation and money were flooding into the United States, and
for the first time the focus of the world tended to not be on what was going on
in Paris or London, but what was happening in New York and Chicago. Chicago was
the fourth largest city on Earth, and was ruled by officials so corrupt that in
reality Alphonse Capone was pulling the strings. Life was brash, bold, and
filled with excitement and tragedy in equal measure.
What
Bryson does extremely well is to focus on the small and long-forgotten details
of life. In the same way that today a world without internet is hard to
remember, he explains how newspapers were fundamental to the experience of
living at the time.
It
was also a troubling time when the first stirrings of ideas that would have
devastating consequences in the 1930s and 1940s were first expressed publicly.
In 1927, the idea that eugenics could make for a better world was accepted by
quite a few people, and listened to by academia. It proved to be the issue
about which America finally fell out of love with Charles Lindbergh, who was an
enthusiastic supporter. With almost a century of hindsight, it is easy to see
how dangerous and misguided it all was. In 1927, there was no such idea.
A
charming part of Bill Bryson’s writing is that he does the job for you that you
usually turn to Wikipedia to do. At the end of the summer he includes a lengthy
epilogue, explaining the fate of many of the world-famous figures on that
long-ago summer. Many did not prosper, many did not live past their fifties,
and there is sadness in reading in particular about the demise of Babe Ruth and
Lou Gehrig, who were so loved by the American people.
This
is one of Bill Bryson’s most accomplished books - still full of the anecdotes
that make his writing so enjoyable and easy to read, but backed up by lengthy
and accurate research, and written with a genuine love for a vanished America.
I am only sorry that it took me four years to read it. I doubt in the far
future that the summer of 2017 will be viewed with such interest and affection.
