The 1920s (pronounced "nineteen-twenties" often shortened to the "'20s" or the "Twenties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1920, and ended on December 31, 1929. Primarily known for the economic boom that occurred in the Western World following the end of World War I (1914–1918), the decade is frequently referred to as the "Roaring Twenties" or the "Jazz Age" in America and Western Europe, and the "Golden Twenties" in Germany, while French speakers refer to the period as the "Années folles" ('crazy years') to emphasize the decade's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism.
During the 1920s, the world population increased from 1.87 to 2.05 billion, with approximately 700 million births and 525 million deaths in total. (Full article...)
First edition of The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926 by Scribner's, with dust jacket illustrated by Cleon (Cleo Damianakes). The Hellenistic jacket design "breathed sex yet also evoked classical Greece".
The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments In Our Time (short story collection) (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work," and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926, by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.
The novel is a roman à clef: the characters are based on people in Hemingway's circle and the action is based on events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the Pyrenees. Hemingway converted to Catholicism as he wrote the novel, and Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera notes that protagonist Jake Barnes, a Catholic, was "a vehicle for Hemingway to rehearse his own conversion, testing the emotions that would accompany one of the most important acts of his life." Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation"—considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I—was in fact resilient and strong. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity. His spare writing style, combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, demonstrates his "Iceberg Theory" of writing. (Full article...)
Siegmund "Zishe" Breitbart (1893–1925), shown here pulling a heavy weight using only his teeth, was a Polishstrongman and circus performer who was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" during the 1920s. He was widely popular in both Europe and the U.S., but died at the age of 32 after an accident during a performance.
... that the colorfully-painted common room of the Jazz AgeNaniboujou Club Lodge(pictured) has been called "a psychedelic marriage of Art Deco and traditional Cree Indian patterns"?
... that Charlie Bowman was a major influence on the distinctive fiddle sound that helped shape and develop early country music in the 1920s and 1930s?
Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson, Yiddish: אַסאַ יואלסאָן; May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-born American singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian.
Self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," Jolson was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, as well as the first openly Jewish man to become an entertainment star in the United States. He was known for his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach" towards performing, along with popularizing many of the songs he sang. According to music historian Larry Stempel, "No one had heard anything quite like it before on Broadway." Stephen Banfield wrote that Jolson's style was "arguably the single most important factor in defining the modern musical." Jolson has been referred to by modern critics as "the king of blackface performers". (Full article...)
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... that the Union of Assyrians's mishandling of shoe-polishing stations led to violent conflicts in 1920s Moscow?
... that 1920s belles-lettres books published by the State Publishing House of Ukraine sold out more rapidly than similar books published elsewhere in the Soviet Union, despite the higher average price?
... that a 1920s reviewer considered Hammond's Hard Lines "dangerously experimental ground for boys' fiction"?
... that much of Archcliffe Fort was demolished in the 1920s to allow for expansion of a railway?
... that in the 1920s, Australian journalist E. George Marks predicted military conflict in the Pacific between Japan and the United States?