51 pages • 1-hour read
One Summer: America, 1927
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Themes
Bigotry Undergirded American Culture in the 1920s
The underlying role of bigotry in America is a theme that becomes more explicit late in the book, though it is detectible from its beginning if the reader knows about certain historical events of the 1920s—namely, the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan, the policies of the Jim Crow South, the prominence of eugenics in American society and academics, immigration reform, or the Red Scare.
A reader might notice that most of the main characters Bryson analyzes in the book are white, Protestant men (until he discusses “The Anarchists” in Part 4). Americans valued that demographic above all others by and large. Bryson’s exclusion of women from the narrative is not an act of bigotry itself, but instead a mirror of the circumstances of 1927. There are a few women of note in the story, but the reader sees how sexism plagues them. For example, Gertrude Ederle enjoyed a moment of fame when she became the first woman, and fastest-ever swimmer, to swim across the English Channel in 1926. The world lost interest in her shortly after her achievement because she “was not terribly interesting or attractive” out of the water (153). Similarly, the famous silent film actor Clara Bow had her career cut short because talking films revealed her Brooklyn accent, and audiences disliked the sound of her voice (327). As Bryson demonstrates, women’s place in the American consciousness was far more precipitous than their male counterparts.
Another striking example of the influence of bigotry and prejudice is the ultimate character arc of Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh dominates the narrative more than any other single figure discussed, yet he goes from being cast in the light of a superhuman hero to a vile antisemite. Bryson notes that both Lindbergh and another famous American—Henry Ford—received state honors from the Nazi regime after the timeline discussed in the story. The revelation of these truths within the book mirrors their revelation in real-time, as Bryson focuses on their accomplishments before sweeping away these trappings and revealing their distressing predilections.
Since the historical events discussed in the book largely took place in Northern cities of the United States, Bryson does not discuss the Jim Crow South, or, indeed, talk much about the specific patterns of violence and disenfranchisement that African Americans faced. He briefly mentions the Great Migration, during which over one million Black Americans relocated from the South to the North, mostly to cities like Chicago, New York, and Detroit, in the 1920s (this general trend of movement continued well beyond the decade). Bryson says that this demographic shift “transformed the face of America” but does not elaborate on the implications of that change, namely that Northern cities swiftly enacted policies to suppress growing Black populations and exclude them from high-paying jobs and homeowning (226).
Instead, Bryson focuses on anti-immigrant sentiment through the example of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Many white Americans distrusted Italian immigrant families and associated Italian workers with violent anarchy and organized crime (285). Police targeted Italian suspects for their nationality alone, even when there was no evidence to support the suspicion. By 1927, the US government had passed sweeping immigration reform that set quotas for sending nations. People from countries across Southern and Eastern Europe, which at the time were sending the largest droves of immigrants, suddenly could not immigrate. The legislation intensified the near-total exclusion of immigrants from Eastern Asia, as well, building on policies that had passed decades prior.
“Bigotry,” as Bryson says, “was casual, reflexive, and well nigh universal” (359). It was certainly a defining feature of every American institution discussed in the book.
Fame Is Complex and Problematic
At one point in the book, Bryson says, “As Lindbergh was discovering, it was a lot more fun to get famous than to be famous” (309). The concepts of fame and celebrity are important to the story and shaped American popular culture in 1927.
Lindbergh’s accomplishment ushered in a new era of celebrity because of a confluence of historical circumstances. The aviation race highlighted the limits and triumphs of human technology and daring. People were able to follow a drama-filled, high-stakes contest that resulted in deaths and crashes before Lindbergh’s resounding success. Lindbergh was a peculiar figure because he was the only entrant in Orteig’s contest to fly solo, and he was unknown, quiet, and seemed altogether wholesome and pure by American standards when he emerged on the world stage. In many ways, Lindbergh created a model of celebrity still replicated in pop culture today.
Though Bryson does not discuss gender in much detail, the reader sees how gender impacted fame as well. There are scattered mentions of women celebrities, and those examples highlight the scrutiny women faced and the unique pressures they were under to be conventionally attractive. Notably, all the central figures in the book are men. Americans perceived importance and heroism along gendered lines, and men had more opportunity in virtually every field than women did. Similarly, most mainstream celebrities were white.
The most famous men discussed in the book—Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge—were somewhat unique because their fame did not merely spike and then completely disappear as was so often the case. Bryson mentions at various points that Americans routinely identified some entertaining novelty, followed it closely for a few weeks or months, and then entirely lost interest. The resulting instantaneous celebrities quickly fell into obscurity, even ruin. One example is Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, who became famous for flagpole sitting. Bryson says, “Gradually the world lost interest in him and flagpole work dried up. Kelly dropped from sight and didn’t appear again until August 1941, when he was briefly jailed for drunken driving in Connecticut. He died of a heart attack on a New York Street in 1952, by which time he was living in poverty” (143). This was not a unique fate. While the three main celebrities in One Summer do not represent this fate, they do present examples that are more memorable to readers which, especially in the case of Lindbergh, makes his loss of favor all the more palpable.
Fame led to the eventual fall of Charles Lindbergh—the kidnapping of his infant son, his espousal of antisemitic views, and his troubling private life in adulthood, all of which were enabled by his fame. Bryson concludes that Lindbergh was “considerably less of a hero than anyone had ever supposed” (441).
The Lindbergh example in particular highlights the nature of American celebrity culture. Celebrities are constantly showcased, celebrated, and scrutinized in equal measure. The pressure to be perfect, moral, dignified, attractive, and more is too much for most people to bear. Americans do not typically forgive celebrities for their complexity and flaws. Conversely, when famous people have shortcomings as serious and dangerous as, for example, antisemitic views, those characteristics often become public, and fans struggle to reconcile the heroism they once perceived with the unforgiveable personality traits that then emerge. No one can remain in the public favor forever.
The 1920s Represented a Major Turning Point in US History
In the 1920s, American culture was in transition, social tensions were very high, and national systems were headed toward change or collapse. In One Summer, readers recognize the beginnings of many entities that now feel like everyday aspects of American life: big government, air travel, rich celebrities, rapidly developing technology, the business of big sports, etc. Bryson is keen to demonstrate, however, how very differently Americans thought and acted during this tumultuous decade compared to how Americans think and act today.
Many of the cultural differences hinge on expectations. With companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla, Americans in the 21st century are exposed to regular breakthroughs in technology and expect to access new products (or updated ones) on a regular basis. The rate of development is almost too fast to easily track, and projects are so numerous that a single product rarely takes center stage in the public imagination to the extent that such a thing was possible in the past. In 1927, and in the 1920s more generally, technological innovations marked major breakthroughs that had the power to captivate millions of people and make them fundamentally reimagine the limits of humankind and machinery. The most obvious example in the text is the field of aviation. Bryson says, “The thought that an airplane could leave New York and reappear hours later in Paris or Los Angeles or Havana, as if rematerializing from thin air, seemed almost the stuff of science fiction” (426). The prospect of such a major change, involving technology as complex and difficult to understand as aviation (“How do airplanes fly?” is a commonly Googled question even today), was one of the major reasons Charles Lindbergh became so famous.
Politics and economy in the 1920s bore both pronounced similarities and differences from those entities at the end of the century. The general trend of government throughout the 19th century was growth. Bryson stresses at multiple points that Calvin Coolidge did not do, and did not like to do, very much to interfere with citizens’ lives. The American economy expanded rapidly, but growth was unsustainable because money was still backed by gold; the US was steadily acquiring all the world’s gold, meaning that prospects for international trade were dwindling. The interventions American and European state bank leaders made led to financial ruin. As a result, during the 1930s, American government expanded rapidly, became much more involved in the daily and working lives of citizens, and enacted regulations to prevent the colossal bankruptcy that marked the Great Depression. Bryson suggests the Long Island meeting of bankers from the US, Britain, France, and Germany in 1927 planted the seeds of these changes.
Racism shaped American society in the 1920s in major and overt instead of covert ways. It was generally socially acceptable to be racist and promote white supremacy through ideas like eugenics. Immigration policy barred more and more people from entry to the US from certain nations, most notably countries in Eastern and Southern Europe, and a near-total ban on immigrants from Asia. The Sacco and Vanzetti example in the text highlights the dangers that anti-immigrant sentiment in the US created for some of the largest immigrant groups who already had to face unsafe working conditions and inadequate pay in addition to social abuse from native-born Americans. American cultural institutions—in the book the most notable and major example is professional sports—tended to be formally segregated by race with the purpose of excluding African Americans from the best opportunities and salaries. These circumstances stand both in contrast and parallel to modern-day immigration policies and race relations in the United States, where anti-immigrant sentiments have shifted toward the Mexican-American border and police brutality against people of color is a major political and societal concern.
There were some limits to bigotry, and pushback against institutional racism would grow as the century wore on. The reputations of both Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh suffered from the men’s derogatory statements about Jewish people. Ford issued a (bogus) apology, but Lindbergh rarely rescinded his words or actions.
The 1920s represented such a huge shift because many Americans (especially white, middle-class ones) had more leisure time, spending money, consumer options, and media exposure than ever before. Possibilities seemed endless when one considered the apparent miracles of technologies like aviation or radio transmission. The resulting optimism and excitement would crash hard at the end of the decade, along with the economy.
At the same time, xenophobia and white supremacy plagued the decade with fear and violence that did not disappear so quickly. Bryson says that the 1920s deserve the title, “The Age of Loathing,” but institutionalized racism did not peak in the 1920s even if there were major expressions of it like immigration reform and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan (359).
In many ways, the 1920s ushered in American modernity with both the positives and negatives of society, culture, and politics still visible today.
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