To an astonishing extent, the 1920s resemble the turn of the twenty-first century; in many ways that decade was a precursor of modern excesses. Bookended by the easy living of the Jazz Age, when the booze and money flowed seemingly without end, and the crash of '29 that led to breadlines and suffering, the images of the 1920s include jazz, bootleggers, flappers, talkies, the Model T Ford, Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh. But it was also the era of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, widespread social conflict, and the birth of organized crime. As unprecedented economic prosperity and sweeping social change dazzled the public, the sensibilities and restrictions of the nineteenth century vanished, and America became, for the first time, thoroughly modernized. There is hardly a dimension of our present world that doesn't trace its roots to the 1920s, and few decades are more intriguing or significant today.--From publisher description.