One Summer: America, 1927 BillBryson. New York: Doubleday, 2013.

Abstract

One Summer: America, 1927 Bill Bryson. New York: Doubleday, 2013.One Summer chronicles in meticulous detail the events of summer 1927 in the United States. These were momentous times: the stock market was booming (two years before the Wall Street Crash), single-minded sculptor was about to carve four giant heads on Mount Rushmore; A1 Capone reigned supreme in Chicago; television was about to hit the market; and precocious aviator became the first man to cross the Atlantic in 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds.The aviator's name was Charles Lindbergh, and his exploits constitute the framework of this highly entertaining volume. The sheer magnitude of the achievement deserves consideration. Lindbergh had very few instruments to find his way, save for compass bearings and mathematical calculations designed to work out how far The Spirit of St. Louis (Lindbergh's plane) had deviated from its prescribed course. Although other pilots tried the hazardous route in 1927, Lindbergh was the only one to plot his course successfully. He returned to the United States to hero's welcome-an estimated 300,000 people waited for him in New York harbor, while millions more lined the streets to City Hall where Lindbergh gave speech. Such was the interest in everything to do with the aviator that when his mother went to Pennsylvania Station to catch train back to the Midwest, five hundred police officers lined the streets to hold back the crowds (176).Lindbergh's response to this adulation was unexpected; he remained sullen, seldom acknowledging the crowd's enthusiasm. Sometimes he had to be literally dragged out to face the public, as on occasion in Dayton, Ohio, when the townspeople threatened to destroy the house of the aviation pioneer Orville Wright, if Lindbergh did not appear. Nonetheless the media continued to represent Lindbergh as warmhearted hero of the American people. Even in time of prosperity, the country need to sustain the exceptionalist myth.Bill Bryson does not shy away from exposing the grimy realities behind these myths. Lindbergh might have been wonderful aviator, but he was pro-Nazi. In 1941 he delivered radio speech explaining why he thought war with Germany was wrong. He became member of America First, an organization opposed to involvement in World War Two. From then on his reputation nose-dived; Franklin Delano Roosevelt was convinced he was Nazi (479). Henry Ford, the inventor of the iconic Model T, was anti-Semitic, the only American favorably mentioned in Hitler's Mein Kampf (1927). In 1927 Ford became involved in lengthy libel suit as his newspaper The Dearborn Independent claimed that Los Angeles lawyer named Aaron Sapiro was member of a band of Jew bankers, lawyers, advertising agencies and produce buyers who had cheated American farmers (265). The suit cost Ford over nine million dollars and damaged his public persona in the process.Yet people at that time-especially in the media- did not really acknowledge such unpalatable truths. They were more preoccupied with maintaining myths or prosperity as way of convincing themselves that the United States had at last become global superpower. Forty-two percent of all that was provided in the world came from America. The country held onehalf of the world's gold resources and appeared to grow wealthier every year. …