Is America today like America in the Roaring Twenties?

The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society. read more

The dynamic called Trumpism strikes most observers as unique in its ugly implications about the soul of America. One need not belabour recent history that seems to have pushed the republic to a precipice. Yes, each passing day brings new outrage, emanating not from the fringes of American political life, but from its marrow. read more

Millions of people in places like Indiana and Illinois joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. To them, the Klan represented a return to all the “values” that the fast-paced, city-slicker Roaring Twenties were trampling. Likewise, an anti-Communist “Red Scare” in 1919 and 1920 encouraged a widespread nativist, or anti-immigrant, hysteria. read more