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Sometimes it's better to get a concise answer from other human beings. Perhaps someone here could even share anecdotes of their parents/grandparents' experience, or perhaps if they're elderly even their own, of this era.
Certainly you are aware that the vast majority of books that document a historical period generally begin with a research question.
What is your research question about the period 1914 to 1947?
Who decides to write a book on a subject which they know so little about that they solicit content suggestions on the internet?
I could see someone looking for shortcut help with a homework assignment doing this, but a potential book author?
I'm going to write a book about humans traveling to the moon. Does anyone here know if humans have ever traveled there? Do you have any stories about moon travel?
I'm writing a book about the trends of the past century and I'd like to know more about this era? What are some important societal, pop cultural trends during this time period?
I can't understand why someone would choose 1947, rather than 1945, as the end point for a discussion on this subject, and you'll get more from a study of what led up to it, mostly outside American borders, than "popular culture" at a time when most people were still peasants enslaved to the land and the landlord. If I could categorize this era in a single sentence, it would be that during those years, the fragile experiment we call pluralistic democracy came close to extinction, but luckily for all of us, survived.
With the fifinal defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the remaining European powers, some sheltering infant democracies, some retaining a
monarch, but with waning power, and some not yet fully unified from the debris if feudalism, set out to stabilize the Continent of Europe.
Here's a link to one of the major players of that earlier day:
What they created lasted just about a century, but mercantilism -- the quest for colonial markets and economic power not subject to free competition, eventually undid this. Meanwhile, ideologically-focused discintent festered among the working classes, cluminating in the uprisings of 1848. and the emergence of Marxism.
World War I killed a minimum of 20 million people by any standard, and the disputes at the Versailles peace table, at which our own President Wilson was expected to lead, but became a gullible participant, set the stage for a more vicious and brutally-orgnized second act. And it's especially worth noting that even the remaning democracies flirted with Fascism during the darkest if these days. Check out the names Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, Frances Townsend, Sewell Avery and Smedley Butler -- all of them Americans.
That ought to be more than enough toi get things started.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-28-2012 at 12:40 AM..
Seems to me the History forum as of late has descended into three categories:
1. Students covertly asking for enlightenment.
2. Alternative history topics, i.e.
3. Contemporary social history topics
I suspect this is another on the line of "Help me do my homework for me".
OP you're premise - writing a book, makes no sense at all. The subject makes no sense - you are covering a period of over 30 years covering 2 worlds wars, a depression, worldwide contagions, multiple political leaders, multiple cultural and technological advancements. Choosing these 2 random dates just do not make sense....and why would an author use an internet forum of random and anonymous sources for book research?
My first suggestion is to perhaps focus your "homework assignment" into more manageable dates - perhaps the time between the wars - 1918 to 1938?
Forgive me for being so blunt, but...if you can not even answer this simple question, do you really think you are qualified to write a book?
There is nothing simple about the question, in fact it is so overly broad as to defy even an attempt to answer the question, which methinks hits more squarely upon your question.
The Blues, Jazz, Tin Pan Alley, Minstrel shows, Vaudeville. Irving Berlin to Duke Ellington. The emergence of movies, from silent to talking. Radio. Flappers, Jitterbugs, Foxtrot, Balanchine. The Harlem Renaissance, Modernism, Art Deco, Cubism. Boom - bust, socialism, communism, populism, John Maynard Keynes, the welfare state. War, civil unrest and civil disobedience. Baseball, professional football and basketball.
What the frack is the op planning on authoring, a compendium of American 20th century culture?
I'd be more than happy to help, just send a contract to me via direct message.
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