Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
This journalistic portrait of the tumultuous 1920's was written in 1930, meaning that the writer did not have the benefit of historical perspective. The disastrous effects of the Depression were not yet fully understood as he wrote. The book, therefore, should be taken on its own terms, and should be assessed for what it is---a portrait of chaotic times with the chaos still swirling around the author. As Allen himself writes, "A contemporary history is bound to be anything but definitive" (viii).
Allen's theme is that the U.S. experienced turbulence in the 1920's which culminated in the Wall Street Crash and which shattered the unrealistic hopes of the country with respect to unbounded prosperity. It is hardly a fresh theme from the historical perspective of the 1990's.
The author's reliance on sources is extensive, but the work is not footnoted and many of the sources are journalistic rather than scholarly, as might be expected in a study of a decade which had just ended.
However, what Allen loses in terms of perspective and scholarly sources, he gains in the liveliness and details of his narrative. His journalistic style keeps his book moving briskly through a wealth of "the fads and fashions and follies of the time" (viii). The highly readable and conversational tone of the writing keeps the reader fascinated. At the same time, the author does concern himself with the more grave issues of the time, from the aftermath of World War I to the market crash of 1929. His focus, however, is inevitably fixed on the everyday details of a period of time which simply could not at that time be made sense of in more broad and general terms.
Allen's own fascination with his subject is clear and gives his book a special vitality. Again, Allen's book benefits in this regard from his journalistic, down-to-earth style, whe...