WHAT A YEAR!

Last week I finished the political issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  Since then I've started reading a book I picked up at a new used-book store a few blocks west of here.  It's WHAT A YEAR!, a book about the US in the year 1929, written by Joe Alex Morris in the '50s.

It's an entertaining work of popular history, similar to Frederick Lewis Allen's ONLY YESTERDAY:  AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE 1920s, which I read about a decade ago.  It was the year of the big stock market crash, of course, but there was lots of other stuff happening.  That was the year when Albert Einstein became world-famous with his announcement of a unified theory of physics or something.  It was also a time when Prohibition was becoming more and more controversial, Charles Lindbergh was the big hero of the day, Hollywood had just converted to sound films, Herbert Hoover began his ill-fated presidency, and silliness was common.  The popular new toy was the yo-yo. (I've also learned that the expression "Oh, yeah?" originated in the 1920s.) Lots of photo illustrations too.

I have a big headache.  I'm running a bit short again, but this time I'll just let it be short.