Books about Flappers from Amazon.com

Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920s puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture.

Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda Sayre first caught the eye of F. Scott Fitzgerald to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings, to the Manhattan speakeasies where patrons partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life. This is 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.

The men and women who made the flapper were a diverse lot.

There was Coco Chanel, the French orphan who redefined the feminine form and silhouette, helping to free women from the torturous corsets and crinolines that had served as tools of social control.

Three thousand miles away, Lois Long, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, christened herself “Lipstick” and gave New Yorker readers a thrilling entrée into Manhattan’s extravagant Jazz Age nightlife.

In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America’s first celebrities—Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate—fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers.

Dallas-born fashion artist Gordon Conway and Utah-born cartoonist John Held crafted magazine covers that captured the electricity of the social revolution sweeping the United States.

Bruce Barton and Edward Bernays, pioneers of advertising and public relations, taught big business how to harness the dreams and anxieties of a newly industrial America—and a nation of consumers was born.

Towering above all were Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, whose swift ascent and spectacular fall embodied the glamour and excess of the era that would come to an abrupt end on Black Tuesday, when the stock market collapsed and rendered the age of abundance and frivolity instantly obsolete.

With its heady cocktail of storytelling and big ideas, Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade.


From the Hardcover edition..
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The Beautiful and Damned is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. It tells the story of Anthony Patch a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, the relationship with his wife Gloria, his service in the army, and alcoholism. The novel provides an excellent portrait of the Eastern elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent, engulfing all classes into what will soon be known as Cafe Society. As with all of his other novels, it is a brilliant character study and is also an early account of the complexities of marriage and intimacy that were further explored in Tender Is the Night. The book is believed to be largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship and marriage with Zelda Fitzgerald..
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New in our successful collection of books showcasing historical, every day fashions comes an assortment of photographs documenting trends in the mid-1920s During post-World War I's economic revival, women emerged from an era of corsets, long gowns, and formality to express their independence. Sheath dresses were designed to mimic mannish styles, while hemlines and haircuts were shortened. Even men's suits changed, to include exaggerated shoulders and an emphasis on narrow hips. Children often were dressed to honor recent war heroes. More than 380 beautiful images feature hundreds of clothing styles from the catalogs of Bellas Hess & Company, and The Charles William Stores, Inc. Costume designers seeking to recreate an era, collectors looking for vintage clothing, and fashion designers looking for inspiration for today's looks, will all find something new here..
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'You know,' I continued, 'that these are the central parts of the body: the loins, the lower part of the belly, the thighs, the bottom, all nervous sensations are centred here. But when the dance is conducted as it was just now, when the bodies touch—still more when it is a man and a girl who are dancing together—when the belly of one is pressed against the belly of the other and when the thigh of one is inserted and rubs against the thighs of the other and the lower part of the belly, thus exciting the treasures which are hidden there. . . '.
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New definitions of American femininity were formed in the pivotal 1920s, an era that vastly expanded the "market" for sexually explicit displays by women. Angela J. Latham shows how quarrels over and censorship of women's performance -- particularly in the arenas of fashion and theater -- uniquely reveal the cultural idiosyncracies of the period and provide valuable clues to the developing iconicity of the female body in its more recent historical phases.

Through disguise, display, or judicious appropriation of both, performance became a crucial means by which women contested, affirmed, mitigated, and revolutionized norms of female self-presentation and self-stylization. Fashion was a hotly contested arena of bodily display. Latham surveys 1920s fashion trends and explores popular fashion rhetoric. Resistance to social mandates regarding women's fashion was nowhere more pronounced than in the matter of "bathing costumes." Latham critiques locally situated contests over swimwear, including those surrounding the first Miss America Pageant, and suggests how such performances sanctioned otherwise unacceptable self-presentations by women.

Looking at American theater, Latham summarizes major arguments about censorship and the ideological assumptions embedded within them. Although sexually provocative displays by women were often the focus of censorship efforts, "leg shows," including revues like the Zeigfeld Follies, were in their heyday. Latham situates the popularity of such performances that featured women's bodies within the larger context of censorship in the American theater at this time..
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Talk about style! Ashley and I were invited to a cool costume party at the house of a famous mystery writer, Fiona O'Leary. We couldn't wait to hit the ballroom for the big 1920s dance contest

The whole flap started when Fiona's adored cat disappeared. And everyone thought our dog Clue "dunnit"! Ashley and I were sure our pooch was framed. But we'd have to prove it -- or Olsen and Olsen could end up Clue-less!

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The definitive collection of a legend from the golden age of magazine illustration.

Imagine America in the 1920s, the last stand of the Golden Age of Illustration and a time of tremendous social change. On one side of Paradise were the nationally known illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg, and J.C. Leyendecker. But rapidly gaining in popularity were the young irreverent illustrators/cartoonists who worked for the emerging humor magazines Judge, College Humor, Ballyhoo, and Life.

These artists attempted to capture the verve and excitement of their times with an energetic line and frenzied pen-and-ink panels containing multitudes with the settings and dress—downtown speakeasy or uptown Stork Club, hot jazz bands or windy jump seats, slinky dresses set against top hat and tails—just as revealing as the lost souls of the Lost Generation.

Of these young ink-slingers, the one who came closest to capturing this white-hot age was a handsome man out of Omaha and Chicago named Russell Patterson. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Patterson didn't vanish after the Stock Market Crash in 1929. He just found new ways to keep his high style in front of a public desperate for light entertainment—in newspaper strips, magazine covers, posters, costumes and set designs for Hollywood and Broadway, amusement parks to WAC uniforms, all the way to the Atomic Age.

One of the most influential artists of his generation, Patterson's impact spanned decades. The list of Patterson's "alumni" ranged from virtually every published pin-up cartoonist to notables like Walt Disney and Hugh Hefner, who noted it was Patterson, not John Held, Jr. or F. Scott Fitzgerald, who best defined the strut and fret of American life between the two World Wars.

Along with an introductory essay by illustration art historian Armando Mendez, this volume showcases Patterson at his pinnacle, featuring many his most important and dynamic magazine covers and illustrations..
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