The stories of Henry Ford and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, two men whose influence on this period was profound, contain their own narrative drama, as do the stories of the Scopes trial and the Mississippi flood. Unless the historian has the good fortune to come across an unknown or little-known person who left behind a rich trail - paper, or oral, or a combination of the two - he or she is given no narrative lines. True, but there is an inherent difficulty to what might be called the history of the commonplace. Not only does such an undertaking illuminate the reality of most lives, it clarifies what makes so extraordinary the lives of the few who receive the lion's share of attention." In order to grasp the full reality of any era, however, an investigator of the past must attempt the difficult task of understanding the routines of daily life for the many. Daily life for the mass of people in a society tends to get lost in the focus on rulers, religious and business leaders, generals, and other notable or flamboyant individuals. "A comprehensive history of an era must go beyond the momentous and the distinctive to include the story of the unspectacular and routine everyday lives of ordinary people. "Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940" is yet another instance of "bottom-up" history, the basic tenet of which Kyvig summarizes deftly: Dee, one of the country's best small publishers of serious books. Originally put out three years ago in a "library edition" by Greenwood Publishing Group, it is now made available to a general trade readership in this paperback from Ivan R. How these vanished people lived in these United States from 1920 to 1940 is the subject of David Kyvig's study. Marquand put it, "these vanished people made things what they are." But they are arguably no more important in the long run than the quieter developments that occurred in the daily lives of ordinary Americans whose names almost never make it into the history books yet who are, as the novelist John P. The great events that occurred then still echo in the national memory: the Scopes trial, the Mississippi flood, the Lindbergh flight, the stock-market crash, the Depression, the New Deal. The two decades between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II were an incredibly important time in the history of the United States. How Americans Lived Through the "Roaring Twenties" and the Great Depression DAILY LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1920-1940
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