Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago." — A. Palmer Mitchell The most hopeful thing of intellectual promise in America to-day is the contempt of younger people for their elders." — John F. Carter, Jr. New ideas? Perhaps. They're part of the phenomenon known as "The Twenties"—the boisterous period in American history that produced the Charleston and Charles Lindbergh, surrealistic art and gangland -style murder. It was a period of upheaval, of fundamental change in American life. And, as in the sixties, there was an extraordinary people-involvement in politics, business, religion, the arts, and in living. In Loren Baritz's perceptive and entertaining anthology, the authors, politicians, preachers, and eccentrics from this troubled but vigorous period speak for themselves. From Walter Lippmann to Anita Loos, from Bartolomeo Vanzetti to Joseph Wood Krutch, from Herbert Hoover to F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . here are the voices of the fools and the heroes of a wanton but innocent era which, in retrospect, seems to have been a preview. In addition to bringing a past decade back to boisterous life, however, this collection reveals the roots of many of today's most hotly debated issues. For the twenties did not settle problems and disagreements concerning the human spirit versus technology, flag waving patriotism versus international responsibility, puritanical inhibition versus flapper freedom, and many other conflicts of the spirit and mind. Rather, men in the twenties first squarely faced such questions and, as Baritz says, by doing so, "staggered into modernity."