Flappers: A Guide to an American Subculture

by Kelly Boyer Sagert

This book offers an examination of the Roaring Twenties in the United States, focusing on the vibrant icon of the newly liberated woman―the flapper―that came to embody the Jazz Age.

Flappers takes readers back to the time of speakeasies, gangsters, dance bands, and silent film stars, offering a fresh look at the Jazz Age by focusing on the women who came to symbolize it.

Flappers captures the full scope of the hedonistic subculture that made the Roaring Twenties roar, a group that reacted to Prohibition and other attempts to impose a stricter morality on the nation. Topics include the transition from silent films to talkies, the arrival of American Jazz as the country's first truly indigenous musical form, the evolution of the United States from a rural to an urban nation, the fashion and slang of the times, and more. It is an exhilarating portrait of a brief outburst of liberation that would last until the Great Depression came crashing down.

Genres: History

164 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Kelly Boyer Sagert is a freelance writer and eager reader, as well as a chocolate lover, socks avoider, cemetery wanderer, summer preferer, moonlight advocate, baseball fan and fledgling poet. She does not crochet, study calculus or yodel. She is married with two grown sons—and all three of them are pretty cool people to have alongside you on your life’s journey.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 1 out of 5]

A horribly written and researched book that contains some very general information on the 20s and almost nothing about flappers themselves. Nearly half of the book is devoted to thin biographical sketches of famous individuals from the beginning of the century, and most of these have little to do with the alleged topic of the book, unless people such as H. L. Mencken and John Scopes were somehow involved in flapper subculture in some mysterious way the author is keeping secret. Ten minutes with the Wikipedia pages for Flapper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, silent films, and prohibition will give you more content than this text. That would be more research than the author appears to have done.

[Scott Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid introduction to the cultural shifts, in the U.S., that occurred in the 1920s and how some of those shifts effected women in the U.S.

The Biographical Sketches section was fun.

Do not expect too much.

If you are a deep student of history, there is nothing new here. If you are simply interested in a light read about the 20s, this is for you.

[K.H. Vaughan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A horribly written and researched book that contains some very general information on the 20s and almost nothing about flappers themselves. Nearly half of the book is devoted to thin biographical sketches of famous individuals from the beginning of the century, and most of these have little to do with the alleged topic of the book, unless people such as H. L. Mencken and John Scopes were somehow involved in flapper subculture in some mysterious way the author is keeping secret. Ten minutes with the Wikipedia pages for Flapper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, silent films, and prohibition will give you more content than this text. That would be more research than the author appears to have done.

[Selenita · Rating 4 out of 5]

There could be more facts considering flappers and less general information.