What are some good books to read about the roaring 20's?

Question

I need to read a book for an advanced placement social studies class. Any good suggestions?

Answer 1

These are some of the books set in the '20s that I have read and liked/loved. I hope one of them works out for you!! Happy Reading.

The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
It is perhaps the most famous and most written-about long poem of the 20th century, dealing with the decline of civilization and the impossibility of recovering meaning in life.

Three Plays: Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra – Eugene O’Neill
Three classic plays by O’Neill set in the late 1920’s, a picture of life and theatre at the time.

Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Set in the 1920's, the tale describes the fortuitous adventures of Paul Pennyfeather, a nice enough fellow kicked out of Oxford for alleged indecent exposure who then must make a living teaching at an ersatz private school. Of course, his headmaster and colleagues are all ridiculous characters, and the complications that ensue (both at the school and in prison!) are wonderfully over the top.

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
When the Joads lose their tenant farm in Oklahoma, they join thousands of others, traveling the narrow concrete highways toward California and the dream of a piece of land to call their own. Each night on the road, they and their fellow migrants recreate society: leaders are chosen, unspoken codes of privacy and generosity evolve, and lust, violence.

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster.

This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise describes life at Princeton among the glittering, bored, and disillusioned—the post–World War I “lost generation.” Published in 1920, when he was just twenty-three, the novel was an overnight success and shot Fitzgerald to instant stardom as dauphin of the Jazz Age.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

(Pretty much anything from Fitzgerald will be set in the ‘20s).

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero.

The Portable Dorothy Parker – Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) is a literary legend famed for her poetry, short stories, criticism, screenplays, and dramas. She was a founding writer of The New Yorker in 1925 and a key member of the New York literary circle, the Algonquin Round Table. During the Twenties, when she won acclaim for her humorous verse and prize-winning short stories such as "Big Blonde," she became known as the wittiest woman in America. Although not all these stories were written in the 1920’s her liberated wit is exemplar of the “wild women” of the Roaring ‘20s.

You also might want to look at Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? By Marion Meade. A biography of the woman with rapier wit.

Also, many of these authors lived and wrote in the ‘20s:
W.E.B. DuBois
Langston Hughes
Jean Toomer
Alain Locke
Henry Miller
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Raymond Chandler
Dashielle Hammett
Zora Neale Hurston

Answer 2

The Diary of Anne Frank 1984 The Sparrow Anything by Edgar Allan Poe Dracula The Elegance of the Hedgehog The Great Gatsby Narnia Series Harry Potter Series If on a winter's night a traveler A Long Way Gone Persepolis The Phantom Tollbooth The Picture of Dorian Gray Pygmalion To Kill a Mockingbird World War Z The Plague A Walk in the Woods Happy Reading!

Answer 3

Do you mean fiction or non-fiction?

If it's fiction you're after, I also recommend The Great Gatsby; F. Scott Fitzgerald has become synonomous with The Jazz Age. You might also consider something from the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, which would give you a good perspective on African American culture in the 1920s, and could make for an excellent social studies analysis.

If it's non-fiction you're after, check out this list of titles:
http://www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/jazzage-biblio.html

Answer 4

Agatha Christie was a very famous mystery writer from the 1920's and the 1930's some of her early works written in the 1920's are
The Mysterious Affair at the Styles-1920
The Secert Adversary-1922
The Murder on the links-1923
The Man in the Brown Suit-1924
Poriot Investigates-1924
The Secert of the Chimneys-1925
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd-1926
The Big Four-1927
The Mystery on The Blue Train-1928
Partners in Crime-1929
The Seven Dials Mystery-1929
I first heard of Agatha Christie in my Grade 8 English Class. My English teacher wants us to read a lot of the old classics and Agatha Christie was thought of to be one of the great mystery writers in the last century. Several of her books were made into movies and live theater plays. Some of these plays are being acted out on a lot of the stages here in the community I live in.

Answer 5

For a whitebread classic read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For more gritty social commentary try Native Son by Richard Wright. As period novels, I would reccommend Raymon Chandler's novels, but he didn't publish anything until the late 1930s--different era and atmosphere.

Answer 6

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
What Makes Sammy Run
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
A clean, well-lighted place by E. Hemmingway

Answer 7

The Great Gatsby- FScott. Fitzgerald, makes reference to another book called "The Rise of the Coloured Races by Stoddard.' It will give you insights for the on the WWI and maybe, the anxiety & insecurities of the dominant culture today.

Answer 8

The Great Gatsby
Also anything on the Harlem Renaissance - remember that happened during the 20's!

Answer 9

Anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I'd start with The Great Gatsby or his short story "Berenice Bobs Her Hair".

Answer 10

The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzegrald.