Often called the Roaring Twenties, the postwar decade sometimes appears as one long flamboyant party, where the urban rich danced the Charleston and the foxtrot until 2 a.m. In fact, one might just as convincingly describe it as a period of individual possibility and lofty aspirations to serve the greater good. In his 1931 essay "Echoes of the Jazz Age," Fitzgerald wrote, "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire."
The Roaring Twenties
1920
The 18th Amendment, establishing Prohibition, becomes law.
The 19th Amendment passes, giving 26 million women the right to vote.
Warren G. Harding is elected president.
1921
Charlie Chaplin stars …show more content…
T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land published.
First issue of Reader's Digest published.
Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago to play with King Oliver.
Dance marathon craze begins.
1923
First transcontinental nonstop flight takes off from New York and lands in San Diego.
Jelly Roll Morton makes his first Paramount recordings in Chicago.
President Harding dies; Calvin Coolidge takes oath of office.
1924
George Gershwin premieres Rhapsody in Blue.
J. Edgar Hoover appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation, later named the FBI.
The ten-millionth Model T rolls off the Ford assembly line.
Colleen Moore plays the title role in the film The Perfect Flapper.
1925
Charles Scribner's Sons publishes The Great Gatsby.
First issue of the New Yorker goes to press.
After John Scopes is charged with teaching from Darwin's Origin of Species, Clarence Darrow takes his case.
1926
The value of bootlegging in the U.S. estimated at $3.6 billion.
Benny Goodman records his first solo, "He's the Last Word," with the Ben Pollack Band.
Henry Ford institutes the 5-day workweek and 8-hour workday.
1927
The Jazz Singer opens as the first talking motion