One Summer: America, 1927

One of our best and most renowned nonfiction authors, Bill Bryson, takes readers on a trip back in time to one incredible season of American life in One Summer.

One of the landmark events of the 20th century marked the start of the summer of 1927: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic nonstop. His landing at Le Bourget airfield, close to Paris, set off a global uproar and catapulted him to instant global fame. As for Babe Ruth, he was starting his attack on the home run record. On September 30, he would hit his sixty-first home run, setting a mark that would go on for a very long time. Between those dates, Ruth Snyder, a housewife from Queens, and her boyfriend, a corset salesman, garroted her husband. This resulted in a murder trial that went viral on social media. Setting a new record, Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly spent twelve days perched on a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey. Unprecedented rain and Mississippi basin floods devastated the American South, causing a massive humanitarian crisis. The remarkably skilled and obnoxious Herbert Hoover led recovery operations. Calvin Coolidge took an even more relaxed three months of vacation in South Dakota's Black Hills, interrupting an already pleasant presidency. Al Capone, the notorious mobster, strengthened his hold on the illicit alcohol trade by using a flamboyant and lethal reign of terror and municipal corruption. Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, the first real "talking picture," was captured on camera and revolutionised the motion picture business forever. At a covert meeting held on a Long Island home, the world's four most influential central bankers took a critical decision that all but assured a future crisis and depression. That historic summer of 1927 saw all of this and much, much more, and Bill Bryson uses his signature vividness, eye for revealing detail, and delightful humour to convey its outsized people, fascinating events, and sometimes just plain craziness. One Summer elevates it all into the pinnacle of narrative nonfiction, showcasing America's global debut as the major event of that year.