Flapper

A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern

Plot

SHE DANCED THE CHARLESTON. SNEAKED GIN. NECKED IN ROADSTERS. AND LAUNCHED THE MODERN AGE. Flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920s not only hiked her hemlines but also earned her own keep. The flapper’s newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture. Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda first caught F. Scott Fitzgerald’s eye to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings to the Manhattan speakeasies where New Yorker columnist Lois Long partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life. Through the lives of such flapper pioneers as Clara Bow, Coco Chanel, fashion artist Gordon Conway, and others, Zeitz tells the story of America’s first sexual revolution, its first merchants of cool, its first celebrities, and its most sparkling advertisement for the right to pursue happiness. “Flapper” is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade. About the Author____________________ Joshua Zeitz is a lecturer on American history at the University of Cambridge and a contributing editor to American Heritage. His writing has appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. He lives in New York and in Cambridge, England.