Product Review

A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book
A GoodReads Reader's Choice

The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin €œShipwreck€ Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. The first true €œtalking picture,€ Al Jolson€s The Jazz Singer, was filmed, forever changing the motion picture industry.
        All this and much, much more transpired in the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things€"and when the twentieth century truly became the American century. One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.