Historian Goldman\u2019s ambitious book takes a detailed dive into New York City over 10 years. He begins on New Year\u2019s Eve in 1919, describing people partying before Prohibition took hold in this \u201cconsummate metropolis\u201d and \u201chome of modernity.\u201d In 1920, the Gotham Book and Art bookstore was born at 128 West 45th Street. That same year, J. Edgar Hoover, a \u201crising figure\u201d in the Justice Department, was \u201cpreparing his list of subversives to bust.\u201d Beginning in the 1920s, more Americans lived in cities than rural areas, and, as Goldman notes, that was largely due to New York\u2019s growth. In 1920, the city\u2019s population had swelled to 5.6 million. There were three times as many vehicles on the road than five years earlier. Goldman writes, \u201cCongestion had gotten so bad that one police commissioner proposed draining the East River and using it as a roadway.\u201d A signature feature of the city arrived in 1923, thanks to the Neon Light Company; a year later, the first neon sign went up in Times Square, advertising a Willys-Overland coupe-sedan for $585 (roughly $11,000 today). The author sprinkles in profiles of notable figures \u201cat the dawn of public relations,\u201d including Dorothy Parker and Babe Ruth, and lesser-knowns like the entertainer Eva Tanguay. The 1920s saw the rise of Black nationalism and Marcus Garvey, the \u201cNegro Moses\u201d who was cheered by crowds and reviled by those who feared him. More women were entering the workforce, and the number of Jewish New Yorkers in the 1920s grew to almost 30% of the city\u2019s population. Goldman also explores how New York was plagued by a rising hostility toward immigrants and Black people while it was awash with all kinds of new music, notably jazz. This complex city, he writes, was a rich site of \u201cacceleration and deceleration.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Historian Goldman\u2019s ambitious book takes a detailed dive into New York City over 10 years. He begins on New Year\u2019s Eve in 1919, describing people partying before Prohibition took hold in this \u201cconsummate metropolis\u201d and \u201chome of modernity.\u201d In 1920, the Gotham Book and Art bookstore was born at 128 West 45th Street. That same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}