One Summer America, 1927 [Paperback]

AChicago TribuneNoteworthy Book
A GoodReads Reader's Choice

The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’sThe Jazz Singer, was filmed, forever changing the motion picture industry.
        All this and much, much more transpired in the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things—and when the twentieth century truly became the American century.One Summertransforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.

“Rollicking, immensely readable. . . . [Bryson’s] subject isn't really a year. It’s human nature in all its odd and amazing array.” —Chicago Tribune

“A wonderful romp . . . . Fascinating. . . . Written in a style as effervescent as the time itself.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Addictively readable.” —The Wall Street Journal
 
“Entertaining. . . . Splendid. . . . Sure to delight.” —Newsday
 
“Marvelous.” —The Huffington Post

“Bill Bryson recounts a remarkable period in America’s passage. . . . [One Summer] captures that fabulous summer—indeed, the entire era—in tone and timbre.” —The Boston Globe

“A lively account of 1927’s events and its cast of characters, both well known and long forgotten. . . . [Bryson] has a keen eye for amusing and arresting tidbits of information.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The best kind of general-interest book: fun, interesting, and somelÃ"