A Fever in the Heartland - Timothy Egan

 

In the 1920s, after WWI and when the Jazz Age, flappers, and prohibition lived, the Ku Klux Klan emerged again, after having been eliminated after the Civil War.  This story tells how they came to have over 500,000 members in the mid-1920s, marching in mass in Washington DC.  The horrifying fact was that a major stronghold was Indiana, the "heartland" of the U.S.  The membership spread from there at the instigation of D.C. Stephenson, a despicable manipulator who coerced men to join for $10 a piece. He exploited the prejudices of whites against Jews, immigrants, and African-Americans. The book chronicles the rise of the Klan and its downfall (or maybe only its receding) after Stephenson is tried for a brutal attack on a young woman. It's easy to see the parallels to current U.S. divisive factions.  A must read.

Published: 2023  Read: October 2023 Genre: History 

The Radium Girls - Kate Moore

Sub-title:  The dark story of America's shining women

I read this for my Ladies of the Club book group..over 25 years we've been meeting!

The true story of the young teenagers and women who painted luminous dials with paint brushes they "pointed" by "lipping" - wetting them with their mouths.  The were poisoned by the radium powder used and suffered horrendous illness and disfigurations and death while their employer denied any ill effects.  Their case led to worker's rights legislation.  A powerful read.

Published: 2017  Read: November 2018  Genre: History

Savage Beauty - Nancy Milford

subtitle: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

"My candle burns at both ends;
     It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes and oh, my friends--
     It gives a lovely light."


Do you remember this rhyme?  It was written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who went mostly by her middle name, Vincent, and was a torch bearer for the young women of the 1920's.  She was the most famous poet of the Jazz Age and flaunted convention - she smoked in public, had many lovers and was a prolific poet, receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1923.  Millay was known for her sonnets and also wrote plays.

Her poem "Renascence" [deliberate spelling] won her attention at 20 years old and the controversy over it not being awarded the top prize in the Literary Year magazine brought her to the attention of a patron who paid for her education at Vassar.  She moved to Paris in 1921 and married a man 11 years her senior who took care of her and their domestic needs the rest of their lives.

The author of this biography previously wrote the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald.  She had access to the letters and drafts of Millay's and worked extensively with her sister, Norma, in the writing of the biography.  The author uses the letters and documents to show the effort Millay expended in writing her poetry and to illuminate her experiences that led to the poems.

I think it was a thorough, accurate, and detailed record of Millay's life that got bogged down at the end in presenting her letters instead of interpreting or commenting on them.  

Published:  2001  Read: December 2015  Genre: Biography

The Paris Wife - Paula McLain

I picked this up at the used bookstore because I'd read a blogger's review.  I hadn't known that it was the story of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley and had passed it over before.  Hadley was almost six years older when they met in their 20's.  Their marriage was spent mostly in Paris during the jazz age, among friends like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  They had a son (one of three sons of Hemingway; he had two others with his second wife) and she was his muse during the writing of his novel, The Sun Also Rises.

I enjoyed reading of how passionate Hemingway was about writing and how much he struggled to write and get published.  At one point his wife brings all his writing to him and loses the valise carrying the papers.  It was a crushing blow and seems to have been a turning point in a relationship that was already deteriorating.

Hadley is portrayed as a traditional woman who lived a sheltered life and never embraced the wild, reckless life of the 1920's after WWI.  She was his steady anchor as he threw himself into life, running with the bulls in Paloma, skiing in the Alps, drinking in Paris.

A good read.


Published: 2011  Read: November 2015  Genre: Historical fiction

In Defense of Women - H.L. Mencken

This is a very old book I got from the collection of my friend, Teddi, who passed away and left me her books.  H. L. Mencken was a critic and writer who commented on society.  This book is satirical at first, with a tongue in cheek take on women as the superior gender and men being bamboozled by their actions.

His thoughts on women and marriage:

"She seeks a husband, not sentimentally, but realistically; she always give thought to the economic situation; she seldom takes a chance if it is possible to avoid it."

After several chapters he seems to applaud instead of criticize the evolution of the female gender and changes to praise.

In describing the "New Age" [the coming 1920's] he points out that:

"There already appears in the world, a class of women who, while still not genuinely averse to marriage, are yet free from any theory that it is necessary...who, with their economic Independence assured, either by inheritance or by their own efforts...do exactly as they please, and make no pother about it."

I wish I'd known Teddi had this book when we could have talked about it.  It would have been a lively discussion.


Published:  1922  Read: August 2015  Genre: Essay