The 1920s were a lot like us.

1920s people went through dramatic changes that left the world a different place from what it was before. They knew uncertainties and even fears, but also great excitement and potentialities.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
They faced challenges very similar to ours: the changing role of different social groups, a great change in the way people communicate, the intrusion of the machine in everyday life with the consequent depersonalisation. They faced a world that shrunk as it globalised a little more every day and a feeling of loneliness in the new city environments.

It may have been one hundred years ago, but it feels very close to home.

This is why I think that learning about the Twenties and their anxieties may tell us a lot about ourselves, about the insecurities we are facing today, and maybe give us some hope for the future.

"The 1920s" meant as a phenomenon was born and eventually bloomed particularly in the Western World, but they rubbed off on many other societies around the world.
Therefore, while in this book I focus primarily on the American and the European 1920s, I tried to offer glimpses of how this phenomenon manifested in different parts of the world.

It's interesting how many cultures adopted this new outlook on life and how each culture interpreted it in its own way, according to its agenda. The only thing that I see emerging over and over again is the spur to change, a yearning for greater freedom of expression, and a fascination with everything 'different'.

The book is organised alphabetically. Every word covers an aspect of the Twenties that characterised it uniquely. It isn't meant to be exhaustive in any way, but I hope that it will help to give a more complete, more complex image of what was far more than Prohibition, gangsters and gin.

You'll find here: