Bill Bryson’s written another fantastic book though this time it’s not about his ramblings across our planet but a very specific point in history where numerous astonishing and world-changing events took place: the summer of 1927 in America.
It’s primarily about Charles Lindbergh and his plane The Spirit of St Louis crossing the Atlantic in a single flight for the first time. Bryson provides a truncated biography of Lindbergh and his family as well as the background circumstances of the flight and the various contenders who also attempted (and failed, often fatally) to do what he did, seemingly effortlessly.
It’s an amazing story and I’m glad to have finally become acquainted with all the details, not least taking a closer look at the plane itself which incredibly had no forward-facing windows!! Lindbergh had to tilt the plane sideways to get a window view of where he was flying or else deploy the periscope (which he rarely did). It’s such an unbelievably small and flimsy craft and only further highlights what a gifted pilot Lindbergh was.
His ground-breaking achievement aside, Bryson follows Lindbergh through the rest of his life. I won’t go into all of the details but it’s a fall from grace and, despite personal tragedy (the famous kidnapping of his first child), he held some utterly repugnant views that aligned with the Nazis which played a big part in his downfall from being the greatest American hero of the age.
The other “main character” so to speak is George “Babe” Ruth, the legendary baseball player, who hit a record 60 homeruns in the 1927 season. I say “main character” because this is a nonfiction book and not a novel but he really was a larger-than-life “character” and I enjoyed reading about his life in general. He was a crazy guy but it’s understandable why he was, and remains, so beloved by so many. And, while his sporting achievements have been overshadowed by more recent players, I liked Bryson’s line about how, instead of steroids, Babe did it all “on hotdogs”!
It was also fascinating finding out about Babe’s teammate, Lou Gehrig, a man who more deserved the nickname “Babe” for his all-round innocence, long after becoming a baseball success (Ruth himself lost the innocence of his nickname almost immediately after leaving school!). And he seemed like an absolutely decent chap to boot. I really liked reading about the growing popularity of boxing and the rise of Jack Dempsey, culminating in his title fight with Gene Tunney.
I knew the name of Henry Ford but I didn’t know quite how pig-ignorant the man was! It’s surprising how successful he was given how bone-headed a number of his business decisions were. When his son finally convinced him to upgrade the bestselling Model T, rather than develop a new car (what would become the Model A) before switching production, he closed production altogether while he and his team of specifically non-experts (another of Ford’s weird quirks - he didn’t trust experts) bungled together a new design. 60,000 workers were made redundant and Ford lost millions, including a huge chunk of market share.
What was still more interesting about Ford was Fordlandia, his insane idea of recreating an American town in the middle of the Amazon so he could get cheap rubber for his tires! That’s an amazing story that deserves (and probably already has) a book of its own.
Charles Ponzi began his grift for which his namesake is remembered today; an oddball pair of train-loving businessmen brothers, Mantis and Oris Van Sweringen, are highlighted; Mount Rushmore begins to be chiselled out; an area the size of Scotland flooded the Southern states when the Mississippi river broke its banks leading to the rise of the next US President Herbert Hoover.
Hoover was another remarkable figure. He was so cold as to be almost robotic but he did some extraordinary things, particularly post-WW1, in helping feed millions of starving and homeless people. And, though he was a one-term president after the amusingly lazy Calvin Coolidge refused to run for a second term, I didn’t realise a lot of New Deal policies that FDR gets credit for began under his administration.
Al Capone and prohibition, the emergence of talking movies and television, the murder trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the architects of the 1929 Wall St crash making their disastrous plans - there’s too much to mention but it’s easy to see why Bryson singled out this period of history and was able to write a 600 page book about it.
Some of the baseball stuff didn’t do much for me, not being a fan of the sport, but it doesn’t seem right to give this book anything but the highest rating when it’s such an accomplishment and an inspired idea.
One Summer: America 1927 is a brilliant, entertaining and informative history book, written throughout in clear, accessible prose that I would recommend to anyone, even readers not particularly interested in this era - Bill Bryson will make you interested! Bravo, sir.
Now let’s all do the Charleston!
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