Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the "Roaring Twenties" and the Great Depression

by David E. Kyvig

The twenties and thirties witnessed dramatic changes in American life: increasing urbanization, technological innovation, cultural upheaval, and economic disaster. In this fascinating book, the prize-winning historian David E. Kyvig describes everyday life in these decades, when automobiles and home electricity became commonplace, when radio and the movies became broadly popular. The details of work life, domestic life, and leisure activities make engrossing reading and bring the era clearly into focus.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Research, The United States Of America, Economics, Historical

330 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Cynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4 Stars.

What I Liked:
1. Focused on technology. Spoke of how technology made people feel more connected, and made them more prosperous: Cars, trucks, tractors, improved industrialization, electricity, radios. Those who did not have these advantages--like isolated farmers in the South, particularly black farmers, found themselves more impovished and more isolated. We still use all these technology, just improved with electronics.

2. Spoke on being connected. Today we use many images and colors. Those in the 1920s and 1930s benefited from free rural postal service, catalog services, and multiple newspaper and magazine subscriptions, movies. We still use the electronic, imagery-filled, sound-added versions of these ways of being connected: free email, vendor's websites, e-subscriptions YouTube Channels to favorite movie streaming services.

3. Spoke of improved education. More people stayed in school longer. Workforce changes required more literate, healthier workers. Time of school recess and group exercise backed up with health education. We should remember this lesson. (Talking to you school district administrators and community leaders.) Extra Note. Time of declining use of one room schools and replaced with consolidated/larger school districts. Outlying students were bussed in. In this way, more students were present to justify the buildings of high schools. High school education started to be commonplace. Two-year and later 4-year Normal schools were established to provide further and normalized/standardized education for public school educators.

What I Wish Were Better.

The Statistics. Kyvig writes a solid synthesized popular social history. He wants to make it accessible. How many times have readers complained that the tables and charts are too challenging! I believe as a writer of popular social history, Kyvig wants to accommodate his readers, yet the statistics are difficult to hold in the mind when just written into the text. I believe a softening of the statistics without merging them completely into the text would help.? Maybe citing them in the text and them organize g them again in a chart or other format. In had to work hard to hold informtion in my pretty head and to go find information again when I wanted it again.

Solid Work.

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mixed bag. I liked the sections about food, education (esp. the increase in high school attendance during the depression), immigration, and the way growing mass media created a more cohesive mindset across different communities across the country.

Most especially, I liked the section about the country becoming more electrified, the uneven implementation (took until the 1950s for rural areas to catch up), and the ways it really changed life (Muncie, Indiana's library loaned out 8 times books per inhabitant more in 1925 than it had in 1890).

Otherwise, the book is kind of a dud, especially the first and last chapters, and the radio and movie chapters (which I was expecting to enjoy). Eh.

[Sarah Zama · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good introduction to the social history of the Stats between the two World Wars. It focuses primarily on the Twenties, but there is a good long cue on the Thirties too.

The book starts off with a picture of the United States at the closing of WWI, a portrait that tries to take in as diverse situations as possible, with a heavy help form the statistics of the Census (statistics are a great part of this book, which if on one hand grounds the matter in an objective perspective, on the other comes across as dry in many places) and some anthropological studies of the period.
Because the Twenties are essentially years of big changes, regarding so many ways of life, this is where the book focuses. The first few chapters deal with the three more important innovations in the decade: the car, the radio and electricity. Things that already existed, but now became so widely common to change the way people worked as well as they used their free time. In response to this new asset of life - more free in many respects - people expectations changed as well, so that to a material change correspond a more `spiritual' one.

A couple of long chapters in the middle of the book deal with the way life moved in the short run (everyday life) and in the long run (a year around portrait of life). Here is where the true details come out: the way life changed inside the house, the way houses changed in response to new technology and new expectations, the way people behaved toward one another, the way they reacted to small and big event in life (going to school, falling in love, managing a family, dealing with life events like births and deaths). Changing behaviours toward job, changing behaviours toward entertainments, changing behaviours toward food, clothes, hairstyle, advertisement.

And to be honest, what impressed me the most about these chapters concerning the expectation of people and the way they sought to realise them, is how much it's similar to today attitude. It's true, there are so many different things between the Twenties and today, but there are also so many similarities. More, in my opinion, than with any other past decades. It's here that so many things we take for granted first entered people's life (electric appliances, the car, far and fast communication - radio and phone - but also the way people get together - parties, cinema - and look to each other - a less restrained, less rules-heavy way of relation). It's here, in a way, that the world as we know it today started.

Then in a couple of chapters, the book tries to touch all other important aspects of social life: policies, economics, law and order. These are very wide and complex matters, though, and the book only touches them by. The soar and fall of the KKK, important trials that impacted on the society's perception of themselves (Scottsboro, Sacco and Vanzetti), natural catastrophes that affected entire sections of the population (the Dust Bowl), the attitude and real situation of criminal life, the attitude toward immigration
All of these is dealt with with great essentiality and the reader is left wanting to know more. And this is a shame, although I understand the author had to make a choice about the subject matter.

The last third of the book deals with the Thirties and the Great Depression. It starts off with a very vivid description of the onset of the Depression and the way it affected people's life. It explains in a clear, simple way (maybe even too simplified, but I won't complain about that) what caused the 1929 stockmarket crash, and how the psychological and emotional reaction of people affected it as well as an objective economic difficulty. It describes in essential, but very vivid details, and with scant or no statistics, what life was for a great part of people. It was nearly more a narration than dissertation.
The last chapter then relates the work of the New Deal. It is essentially a chart of the many initiatives the government took to relief people's life, with brief dissertations of why those measures were taken and how people reacted to them. A bit dry, maybe (also because of the heavy statistics), but interesting all the same.

The last chapter is a second portrait of American society at the verge of WWII. Again statistics, again considerations, again a look to the same communities the book opened with and to the changes they had been through in the Twenties and Thirties.

Overall, a very interesting book. Maybe more valuable for people interested in the Twenties than the Thirties (the Great Depression is dealt with in an admittedly extremely essential way), but certainly enough to get a good overall grasp to life during these two decades.

[Cheryl Gatling]

In this book David Kyvig says that the way we live our daily lives changes gradually. We are not aware of the changes happening, until we look back from a distance, and say, whoa, that's different. The period of 1920 to 1940 was one in which major changes happened. Electricity in houses changed the way people cooked, and cleaned, and passed their time. Radio broadened people's horizons. Cinema broadened them even more. Automobiles, industrialization, the move to the cities, immigration… all these things changed how people worked and played and interacted.

In addition, these were years when the federal government, which had been a distant abstraction, began to touch the daily lives of ordinary people, first by allowing women to vote, then by prohibition, which told American what they could and could not consume. Eventually there were the New Deal programs of the depression, which meant employment, sustenance, and survival for millions of Americans.

The book begins and ends with analysis of census data, which is pretty dry, but contains many interesting nuggets. Toward the end it sums up by comparing the way of life in different communities around the country- a town in Iowa, one in Georgia, one in New Mexico, one in Pennsylvania, the big city of Chicago,

One of the recurring themes of the book is the way changes happened at different rates in different places. The biggest division was between urban and rural. Changes happened much more slowly on farms and in the country. In addition the South often lagged behind. One can see how these difference in lifestyle and mindset led to many of the conflicts and political divisions that plague us to this day.

Or one could say that the conflicts were always there. Kyvig talks about the terrible racial unfairness that led to lynchings, and the KKK, and also resentment of immigrants, and then the devastating effects of the depression. But what made this book most interesting to me was not its treatment of the sweeping events that changed history, but the little fascinating facts-- like that when people got electricity in their homes, they began to read more, and the circulation of public libraries doubled.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The first chapter and half were a bit slow, filled with statistics from census reports, but after that things really picked up and became incredibly interesting. There were a few parts where my eyes glazed over, mainly when the topic was the stock market, but overall this book gave me almost all the info (and then some) that led me to pick up the book in the first place. If you're looking to understand how ordinary families lived during the depression and up to the brink of WWII, I highly recommend this book.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not obvious here in the 21st Century, but the period between 1920 and 1940 in the United States saw cultural and, especially, technological changes almost as profound as the effect of the Internet and personal computers in the 1990s. In those 20 years, as Prof. Kyvig points out with meticulously researched and irrefutable figures, America went from a mostly rural, non-electrified, culturally diverse loose collection of peoples to a much more homogeneous, industrialized, technically savvy single nation.

The proliferation of the internal combustion engine brought us not only the automobile, with its massive impact on the layout of our cities and dwindling sense of isolation between parts of the country; but also the tractor which freed up countless man-hours of previously back-breaking human- and animal-powered labor, and allowed many times more land to come under cultivation, which in turn led to greater prosperity and the ability for America to feed many more citizens.

Likewise the phonograph and, even more so, radio and cinema, exposed people to the cultures of other parts of the United States, and by the outbreak of World War II had well begun to unify the regions into a single "American" culture. This trend was accelerated by the drop-off in immigration during and after World War I, as the previous wave of immigrants assimilated and had American-born children who identified more closely with their American homeland.

The last half of this book is preoccupied--rightly--with the Great Depression and its effects on the economy, on family life, on the culture, and most of all, on the federal government and its relationship to the citizenry. And here's where Prof. Kyvig loses me a little, because he touts all the reasons that the expansion of the federal government was good and highlights where all the new (and in many cases unconstitutional) programs and agencies helped mitigate the misery of the Depression; but he never once goes into why the unbridled growth of government and its interference in Americans' lives might not have been an unalloyed good. He mentions a couple of times, in passing, that some people opposed certain of FDR's initiatives; but he never takes the time to explain why they might have had a point, he just hints that these people were bad actors who spoke up for purely partisan political reasons, and leaves it at that. He never brings up the argument, made many times in the subsequent decades (most convincingly by Prof. Burton Folsom of Hillsdale College in his book New Deal or Raw Deal?, and by Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian in the Wall Street Journal [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S...]) that Roosevelt's policies and phenomenal increase in government spending actually prolonged the Depression, leaving Americans in the late '30s with just as much unemployment as there had been eight years before, but now with unprecedented levels of national debt to boot.

But despite my dim view of Prof. Kyvig's take on the federal approach to solving the depression, I found this book overall to be delightfully informative and impeccably well and deeply researched. It's tightly written as well, not full of academic jargon but in colorful, short sentences. It's easy and pleasant to digest even one of the longer chapters in a short sitting. And while the first couple of chapters may be a bit long on the statistics, they help build a solid foundation for the more personal and anecdotal chapters which follow.

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Kyvig (1944-2015) was an award-winning constitutional and political historian who also enjoyed telling the story of ordinary people. With Myron Marty, he coauthored the influential Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (1982), and he served as president of the National Council on Public History in 1990–91. Tall and bald he was conspicuous at professional conferences, and his friends sought him out for his warmth, jovial personality, and ability as a raconteur.

This book is a fine introduction to daily life in the 1920s and ‘30s, perhaps the most “popular” one that an academic could comfortably write. It’s great source for research in the era. In fact, you will find many GoodRead readers have used this book in history classes that they teach or as a research guide for a novel they are writing. Unfortunately, the statistics are not presented in graphical form, and Kyvig’s discussion of the ‘30s is heavier on the political side of things than one would expect from a book about daily life. Still, I’m sorry that I don’t have the opportunity to read a similar book Kyvig was preparing on the 1940’s and ‘50s, a project ended by his sudden death from a heart attack in 2015.

[Heather Muzik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call me a nerd, but I loved this one. I found it to be a truly eye-opening history of these decades. This period began the harmonizing of the American experience. I was shocked by the details about southern progress and how behind the region was in regards to the creature comforts of the day. This historical reference focuses on such elemental parts of life that my classes in school never covered. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip through general stores and catalogs and department stores and to the family dinner table.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

For nonfiction, this book definitely possessed a well-organized narrative that described domestic developments and everyday living from 1920-1940. I know that the reason many of my fellow reader friends tend to stay away from such forms of nonfiction includes that one, very perceptive fact that these books can often be dryer than the Sahara Desert. Been there, done that. Also, it's a reminder of everything they didn't like about history classes in school. However, I want to counter this thought with this particular book, as I wish THIS was part of my textbook/required reading list in college. So much culture erupted and forever changed the landscape of American life during these 20 crucial years that I feel it is important to understand them from an all-encompassing approach. Each chapter is separated into different forms of cultural development, such as the impact of the automobile, cinema, or radio, while also looking at daily functioning and changes within the household, such as consumer changes in buying with the onset of advertising, and dating behaviors becoming more of an independent, casual pursuit with the indoctrination of cars majority of households. As I stated, there is a narrative quality to this book that gives it meaning for those who are more proficient with fiction and storytelling styles, mixing chronological onset of events and shifts with the impact of major cultural events, such as the major effects of the Great Depression on daily life for Americans. Importantly, ethnic differences in these shifts are also covered, as to talk about the American landscape would not be complete without analyzing impacts on various cultural, ethnic, and national groups. For anyone attempting to begin reading historical nonfiction, this is a great book (along with The Worst Hard Time) to begin that journey.

[Wes Brummer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this book as research for my novel "Dust and roses." I got to say it is a thorough book on the day to day living of the 20s and 30s. A lot of subjects are covered; movies, radio, politics. prohibition, farming, the growing mass culture, crime, and the shift of the Roaring Twenties to the Dirty Thirties.

Your interests will determine your level of interest on certain chapters. For me the chapters on radio, movies, and the role of electricity was very interesting. The roots of the Great Depression a bit less so.

Because the country has so many different cultures the book could have been bigger yet, but it would have gotten bogged in detail. It is a great survey of history that tends to slip between the cracks of other books. Some chapters were dry, mainly because of my low interest in that subject, but, for completeness, it needed to be Still a lot of jun to read. If you have the interest, be sure to read it.

[allison! · Rating 3 out of 5]

read: july-august 2021 (for school)
format: hard copy
rating: 3/5 stars
notes:

- can't really give this a comprehensive review, but overall i liked what i read, and the amount of detail the author went into was really nice- i definitely learned quite a bit while reading this. my biggest complaint is that this book had a serious lack of diversity in it's recap of the american 1920's and 30's- i would have really appreciated more information about POC and the women's rights movement, as well as the presence and importance of LGBT+ people at this time. the book focused very heavily on the life and problems on the white middle and upper classes- with things like the Jim Crow laws having only a few paragraphs dedicated to them. i think that some very important topics were seriously glossed over, and i wish it had been better in that aspect.

[Raye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm especially glad that I chose to pick this book up now, because I think the author's premise that the 20's and 30's was truly when modern America was formed it easier to see now than ever before. Current parallels with the xenophobia and conformism of the past were brought into sharp focus through this reading.

Radio, movies, unions, automobiles, manufacturing, diet, education, leisure... Everything imaginable is covered.

This was a dense book because it truly attempted to be an exhaustive study of life in the 20's and 30's. It took a while for me to read it, but I enjoyed the comprehensive array of facts and statistics, and though it was information packed on every page, I didn't find it dry.

I only wish other people I knew were reading it so we could discuss it.

[Nadir · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a textbook, but at times it reads like one, quoting statistics of the depression era fairly regularly. Despite that it is a broad-ranging look into the lives of Americans as technology improved while the economy worsened.

The number of passages that could, with minor adjustments, be taken out of today's headlines is the most compelling part of the book. It certainly makes one wonder if indeed past is prologue. It seems very unlikely than an FDR waits in the wings to "fix" all that ails America today, though. I suspect more of the 'bad times' described in the book will be seen before that FDR ever comes along.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started reading it, I was a little wary. Statements like "In the 1920's inventions such as the radio and the vaccuum cleaner came to be seen as necessities..." made me wonder if there was anything in the book that was worth my time. However, after the first couple of chapters the information was significantly better even if the writing sounded mostly like a textbook. I found myself wondering how anyone even remotely familiar with the Great Depression can look at the current state of our national affairs and not use the D-word.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How Americans Lived through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression" was one of my granddaughter's college textbooks - always chancy as a book to read for fun; but the professor tells a good tale about the world where my parents grew up. He packs it with statistics, which I find interesting if well written and to the point, as done here. "Social history" might be waning a bit, at any rate in history professionals' realm; but it's still a fine way to delve into our past, and besides, great fun to read.

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing could totally encapsulate and explain 1920 to 1940 in the USA but this book does an awesome job of taking specific elements that spanned the daily life of people and gave you a look at the lives of everyday people. It focuses on everyday people and how they lived, giving some distinction of the difference between rural and urban sites and the difference of north to south.

Would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in how history was lived, and not just simply telling the story of conquerors.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter is a bit tedious, but once you get through that, the rest of this book is extremely interesting. I really enjoyed following the social changes caused by technology, such as how the automobile gave teenagers a private place to neck, thus killing the 'sitting in the parlor' supervised while courting. This book is an amazing base for any historian or vintage enthusiast for the early 20th century.

[David Blankenship · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid social history. During a time of great social change, through the widespread adoption of automobiles, telephones, entertainment, and other marketed consumer goods, how did life change? Intentionally the author is holding up a mirror to our 21st century social changes.

Two negatives. First, the writing is a bit dry and statistics-heavy, especially in the first half of the book. Second, while there is an extensive bibliography, the details are rarely footnoted.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved learning more about this time period! Definitely dry in places, but still fascinating to this historian wanna-be. I was surprised how much of this book was a review though. It's never bad though to get a good review. Kyvig did his research and I will definitely take advantage of his bibliography.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. I haven't updated the status in a while since I've been using it in my AP U.S. History classes. We are now done and I can say it was quite useful for teaching my students about this period. I particularly liked the little details such as the downsizing of typical homes and their improved cleanliness due to electrical lighting.

[Mickey Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure if this book adds much about "daily life" as much as it is a broader history of the period. There are some interesting facts I didn't know about how people lived and what was going through their heads during the 20s and 30s, but I already had learned most of what's in this book from regular history courses and books.

[Jessi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. The book was written in a way that made you want to keep reading. I liked how the chapters were divided up with each of the first few chapters talking about specific innovations such as cars, electricity, et cetera. If you are interested in the 20s and 30s, this is a good starting point for any research you plan on doing. It's not intensive, but it is a good start.

[A. Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty easy read for a history book. The book had more information about the 1920s than the 1930s. Towards end the chapters about the 30s had more govt. info than daily life of people, that was boring to get through. And I stopped reading it then.
Studs Terkel Hard Times book has accounts from actually people who have lived through the depression.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book! It was a easy read but very interesting. I learned about during that time about the daily life and what people really experienced. He portrayed the detailed information in a way that any could understand as well as retain for later.

[Kristin]

I had to read this for my History class. I don't really enjoy history as much but I really like this book. This book was more informational like a history textbook is but it was interesting to read how people lived and what they thought about certain things. I really enjoyed this book.

[Charles Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting. A bit heavy on the statistical side. Too bad the statistics aren't available on the web somewhere as bar and pie charts. Nevertheless, a good look at the period between the two world wars.

[Stephanie Morrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for research for my historical novel. It had a lot of minutiae that fascinated me because I needed to know it, but for a casual reader it might be a little tedious. It truly does talk in detail about daily life so it lives up to its title.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-researched and full of useful information, especially for writers penning novels taking place in this era, this book has provided me with a lot of little details that will come in handy when building my 1920's ghost story.

[J.V. Speyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was decent, as it was. It painted a decent picture of daily life. I found it somewhat lacking in depth, particularly when talking about the lives of women, people in poverty, or ethnic and social minorities.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite dry, especially at the outset. It is, however, extremely informative; worth reading if you have any interest in this period of history.