A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy BookA GoodReads Reader’s ChoiceIn 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, … 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.
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I am a Bill Bryson fan and thoroughly enjoyed this book.
I like it mainly because I love the era it portrays. Good writing.
Bill Bryson never disappoints. I’ve tried reading other authors’ books that attempt to cover a similarly broad scope of time such as this, but Bryson has both the literary chops and the wit to put it off and keep it interesting. He writes with detail but avoids getting bogged down in minutiae that otherwise make a book drag. Bryson also weaves the story of the summer of 1927 so artfully that he is able to tie together disparate characters in ways that you never would have predicted.
Love all the books of Bill Bryson, this is one of my favorites
Beyond his clever wit, Bill Bryson is a brilliant historian. I appreciate his punchy journalistic style as he conveys fascinating facts, layering gobs of information while painting the landscape of the era. Is it possible to become nostalgic about a time period in which you never lived?
Sure. I had heard of many of the people/issues written in the book, but I didn’t really get it. I knew Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. But I had no idea he was THE HERO OF THE DAY. Not the mention the impetus to modern American aviation. And a Nazi…for a while anyway. There were so many more colorful characters in this book, I could hardly contain myself. My spouse really has no need to read this book. I pretty much read it aloud to him. How could I not? Babe Ruth. Jack Dempsey. Henry Ford. Clara Bow. Al Capone. Herbert Hoover. Yes, Herbert Hoover. Maybe I should say Warren Harding instead. He could be described as…colorful. Perhaps unscrupulous is a better word. (I should let Cal Coolidge slide off this list, but I won’t. After all, it was Dorothy Parker who said after Silent Cal’s death, “How do they know?”) All kidding aside, even Cal Coolidge played a pretty interesting role in this book.
I became infatuated with some of the obsessions of the time. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were hitting more homeruns, as individuals, than other teams. I can’t help but think Babe Ruth was our first true celebrity athlete. He was the first to negotiate a contract–when contracts weren’t quite so ridiculous. Announcers actually made more than the best athletes–including Babe Ruth.
The Roaring 20’s conjures images of fun. Excess. Great things were happening–like talking movies. But horrible and unsettling events were happening as well. The largest school killing in our nation’s history. A raging Mississippi flood which devastated enormous areas of land. Highly publicized executions with racial themes and anarchy accusations.
As a book lover, I looked forward to Bryson’s take on the modern writers: Hemmingway, Stein, Fitzgergald, so on. So, when Mr. Bryson informed me how the most popular writers of the day were the bad and trite ones, I was a bit shocked. The best authors didn’t become until years later. Was this a reflection of the mood of the time? A particular, shallow, sentiment? Methinks Fitzgerld was saying something like that in Gatsby.
As a banker, I was also intrigued by an action that was taken by the newly formed Federal Reserve. Without going into great detail, the Fed had cut interest rates to spur investments in Europe. (Europe was still recovering from the war and economic woes–trying to repay war debts.) The grave miscalculation led to more borrowing the US. This behavior, combined with an over-valued stock market added to our woes after the Crash.
There’s so much more to ravish through in this book. Knowing the 1929 Crash is about to erupt makes all of these events that more fascinating. Without realizing it, I was comparing our current situation to this particular past. And while many parts made me feel proud, I certainly did my share of head scratching. I do wonder, what can we learn from it? An era of excess. An overvalued stock market. Racial tension. Uneasy foreign policy.
Obviously, there are no easy answers. But because of Mr. Bryson’s incredible talent, he’s presented a piece of the United States’ story which give us pause for reflection and more discourse. Much more discourse.
Just finished One Summer: America 1927, a non-fiction work by Bill Bryson, which as the title implies looks at the U.S. in the summer of 1927. The subject sounds so narrow and remote that I wouldn’t have read the book except for the fact I’m a big fan of Bryson’s writing and the reviews were fabulous. From page 1 Bryson pulls you in. His research on the book is impeccable and his writing is rich, funny, insightful and captivating. While the window he looks at is the three months of the year, his narrative provides necessary context for the months leading up to and following that summer. There are several main story lines that the author weaves through the 456-page book: Charles Lindbergh’s successful flight across the Atlantic, Babe Ruth’s 60-home run season, the Great Mississippi River flood, Al Capone’s reign of terror over Chicago, and a couple of others. These story lines are interspersed with interesting bits of information and trivia, such as the story of who invented the Ponzi Scheme, how the term “hot dog” came about, and the origins of Mickey Mouse. The year was filled with larger than life characters. I found the section on President Herbert Hoover to be especially revealing.
Nobody better than Bill Bryson. Fascinating year that he brings to life.
This is a beautifully written and detailed history of a seminal year in American History. Being a fanatic student of American History myself, I find this to be an amazing and entertaining book. A stunningly good read.
I am finally getting around to reviewing Bill Bryson’s One Summer, which I read while I was in Japan last month. I was previously familiar with Bryson only as a travel writer; I needed something to read in e-format, though (no sense carrying 40 pounds of books across the Pacific), and my library had this title available.
I loved it. Even though today is but the first of June and I have, hopefully, more than half a year of good reading ahead of me, I’m certain One Summer will make my “best of” list at the end of the year. The summer of 1927 was one heck of a summer and Bryson covers a tremendous amount of ground here. This was the summer of flight, when flyers disappeared one-by-one in their quest to cross the Atlantic and one Charles Lindbergh actually made it to Paris. This was also the summer of baseball, and specifically of the New York Yankees and the long ball – Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were in fine form that summer, hitting balls out of the park with a regularity never before seen, and that would not be seen again for some decades. Prohibition was in full effect; Bryson references some of Daniel Okrent’s more colorful anecdotes from Last Call: Rise and Fall of Prohibition in America, which was one of my favorite 2011 reads. And, of course, we couldn’t have prohibition without Al Capone, Chicago, and the mob. (My favorite Chicago mob story actually dates to 1921: when Anthony D’Andrea died, his honorary pallbearers included 21 judges, nine lawyers, and the Illinois state prosecutor.)
Michigan (the state, as well as the university) gets a fair amount of coverage here, too: Lindbergh’s parents are UM grads and his mother teaches school in Detroit. (His father is dead.) Henry Ford is going crazy preparing to build a new kind of car, hating Jews, and trying to build an empire in Brazil (“Fordlandia,” and neither Bryson nor I made that up), all from the happy confines of southeastern Michigan. And, as an example of how the world has always been populated by deranged and angry folks, Bryson also writes about the school bombing in Bath, Michigan.
And so much more. Calvin Coolidge chose not to run for re-election. Four bankers set the world on a path to the Great Depression. Hollywood transitioned from silent film to talkies.
Bryson does a remarkable job exploring the personalities, politics, and problems that captivated Americans that summer and that would ultimately shape the course of the country from entertainment to economics, sports, politics, and the idea of celebrity. He is, as ever, highly readable, engaging, and not a little irreverent. Come one, come all to the pages of One Summer.
(This review was originally published at https://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2014/06/one-summer-america-1927.html)
So much packed into one summer and one book. Bryson does a fabulous job of bringing it all together in his usual witty way.
One of my favorite writers and a wonderful way to read history: following the specific people and the national/global impact of events during this amazing summer in America.
fun book to read
All one needs to know is that the book is a Bill Bryson oeuvre. He is a marvelous narrator to boot.
This was the year my dad was born, and so many amazing events. Very good read.
While the story revolves around Lindbergh’s successful flight across the Atlantic, the author weaves in many other headlines and storie, that are both informative and entertaining. Bryson always does meticulous research which is reflected in the narrative, so the reader learns while being entertained.