The Roaring Twenties Reference Library chronicles and illustrates a time of great social change in everything from fashion to music to politics.

In the cold and dangerous spring of 1924, amateur detective Annalee Spain races the clock to solve the murder of a handsome barnstorming pilot before the clever Black theologian--a target of the ruthless Colorado Klan--is framed for the crime, and before she is lured by the risky flirtations of the victim's dashing twin brother.

No kids get coal in their stocking these days. Do you know why? It's thanks to The No-Good Nine! Pittsburgh, 1931. When Peter awakens on Christmas morning to find his stocking full of coal, he is outraged. After he finds the Naughty List, which contains the names of some other children who received no gifts, he decides they should band together and journey to Santa's workshop to plead their case, as well as play with the toys intended for the Nice...

"Flappers, flag-pole sitting, and the Ford Model T--these are just a few of the things that instantly conjure up a unique era--the Roaring Twenties. It was the bees' knees, the cat's meow. If you're not familiar with 1920s slang, all the more reason to read this fascinating look at that wild, exciting decade. It began on the heels of one tragedy--the flu pandemic of 1918--and ended with another: the start of the Great Depression. But in between there...

"He's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever," "Dead Last," "Unfit," and "Incompetent," to name but a few. Many contemporaries were equally cruel. H. L. Mencken called him a "nitwit." To Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he was a "slob." Such is the current reputation of our 29th President,...

Covers the failure of the U.S. economy and its gradual recovery, with special attention to the New Deal, as well as the global situation, including the rise of Hitler. The Almanac covers the era in 16 subject chapters. Biographies profiles 29 major figures of the period. Primary Sources features annotated excerpts from speeches, newspaper and magazine articles, literature, and other documents from the period. For middle school and general audiences....

New York City, 1932. The country is in the throes of the Great Depression, the previous decade's boom of Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants has led to unprecedented urban expansion, and in the midst of an unseasonably warm autumn, steelworkers risk life and limb building skyscrapers high above the streets of Manhattan. In Men at lunch, director Seán Ó Cualáin tells the story of "Lunch atop a Skyscraper," the iconic photograph taken during the...

"In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political "natural." Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with charisma, he seemed destined for high office from birth. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and strategic ability. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his eight-year struggle through illness and recovery....

Prohibition is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating...

"The riveting, forgotten narrative of the most corrupt attorney general in American history and the maverick senator who stopped at nothing to take him down. Many tales from the Jazz Age reek of crime and corruption. But perhaps the era's greatest political fiasco--one that resulted in a nationwide scandal, a public reckoning at the Department of Justice, the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, and an Oscar-winning film--has long been lost to the annals of history....