2. The Beginning of Modern America  The 1920s, with its booming economy, became known as The Roaring Twenties.  End of really bad times...  Some Americans, disillusioned with the traditional values that had led to World War I (1914-1918), sought escape in the pleasures of entertainment and good times.  World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives, but the influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people! The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population.

3. Did you know?  The 1918 flu epidemic known as the Spanish Flu was what nearly killed young Edward Cullen

4. FOR THE FIRST TIME, AMERICA BECAME THE RICHEST NATION ON EARTH  It was the time of the $5 workday, good worker pay for those days.  (according to the Inflation Calculator: What cost $5.00 in 1920 would cost $58.24 in 2013)  People spent money for better roads, tourism, and holiday resorts.  Real estate booms, most notably in Florida, sent land prices soaring.

5. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was “The greatest, gaudiest spree in history.”  As incomes rose, people were able to spend more money on goods and leisure activities.  Many young people began, for the first time, to rebel as a group against the values of the past and authority of their elders.  They experimented with new fashions and new attitudes, actively seeking out fun and freedom.

6. A New Era for Women  The 19 th Amendment passed on August 26 th, 1920—women now had the right to vote. (Did you know that Mrs. Grbic’s Birthday is August 26 th ?)  The emergence of the Flapper—an emancipated young woman who embraced new fashions and the urban attitudes of the day.  Technology made home life easier—from ready-made clothes to canned goods to sliced bread.  By 1930, 10 million women were earning wages in the workplace.

7. Prohibition (1920-1933)  Alcohol is made illegal. People defied this by drinking in illegal nightclubs called speakeasies.  Gangsters made fortunes running and supplying the clubs Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol: 1921

8. The Stock Market  No one suspected that a signal of the end would occur on October 24, 1929, with the infamous stock market crash, and that more than a decade of depression and despair would follow such an era of happiness and prosperity.  Until that time, American life seemed fundamentally sound. The typical American was still hardworking and sensible.  The coming storms lay unseen beyond the horizon as the twenties roared on.

9. F. Scott Fitzgerald  Fitzgerald had a “vigorous and volatile” friendship with Ernest Hemingway, and spent a good deal of time with him in France.  Gatsby did not sell nearly as well as Fitzgerald’s earlier books, and when Fitzgerald died in 1940, he had been largely forgotten.  A part of his literary revival came during World War II, when 150,000 free copies of Gatsby were given to soldiers overseas through a program called Armed Services Editions.