---
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title: "Anchor Books One Summer: America, 1927"
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---

# Anchor Books One Summer: America, 1927

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Review: Bill Bryson takes us back to the USA of a hundred years ago, focussing on the months between May and September 1927 and introducing us to people whom we've probably heard of such as President Calvin Coolidge (and his successor Herbert Hoover), baseball players Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, boxers Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, and aviator Charles Lindberg, who made the first solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21 in the Spirit of St Louis. Digging deeper, he tells us about, for example, Clifford Holland, the designer and chief engineer for the tunnel under the Hudson River which connected Lower Manhattan and Jersey City; the stress of working on this project caused Holland to have a nervous breakdown, followed by a fatal heart attack at the age of 41. The tunnel was named in his memory when it was opened in 1927 (and even though the same fate befell his successor as chief engineer after four months on the job, he received no commemoration). As is characteristic of Bryson's books, this one is packed with eye-catching details like this, including: * the life expectancy of a British pilot in 1917 was put at just eight days [p17] * when Lindberg and Donald Hall, the designer of The Spirit of St Louis, realised they had no idea of how far it was from New York to Paris, they "went to a public library and measured the distance on a globe with a piece of string" [p74] * not only did Babe Ruth famously greet President Coolidge at a match with "Hot as hell, ain't it, Prez?", but he also referred to the holders of a party as the "hostess and hoster" [p181] * during WWI, anti-German sentiment was so rife (following - for example - the sinking of the RMS Lusitania en route from New York to Liverpool) that William Harding, the governor of Iowa, outlawed the public use of foreign languages. This included churches, where Harding proclaimed that "God is listening only to the English tongue" [p228] * one of the problems facing Henry Ford's construction of Fordlandia, a model American community in the jungles of Brazil, was the candiru, a little fish which is alleged to swim into the human urethra and then extend backward-facing spines which made it difficult to extract [p331]. * during a spate of domestic parcel bombing, all the parcels bore a (false) return address of Gimbel Brothers department store in Manhattan. One parcel was returned there for insufficient postage, whereupon the unsuspecting clerk "opened the package, examined the odd contents - bottle of acid, timer, explosives - then packed it all up again, added the necessary postage and mailed it on" [p369]. * John Logie Baird, demonstrator of the world's first live working television system in 1926, so disliked the portly chairman of the board which had been foisted on his company that he narrowed the doorway to his lab, necessitating the chairman to be pushed through from behind when he got stuck on his first (and last) visit [p495]. Such nuggets make this an entertaining and stimulating read. The other thing which struck me was the depth of incompetence, corruption and/or wickedness exhibited by some (not all) of the politicians of the time, culminating in (the admittedly extreme example of) William "Big Bill" Thompson, mayor of Chicago (1915-23, 1927-31), who was openly allied with Al Capone, claimed that George V was intent on annexing Chicago, and set about removing all works deemed treasonous or un-American from the city's schools and libraries. Just as striking was the degree of support which he enjoyed from the voters and - to some extent - the media. Other examples came from the cabinet of Warren Harding, Coolidge's predecessor, in which the military advisor had formerly been his newsboy, the head of the Veteran's Bureau managed to steal or lose $200 million and the interior secretary corruptly sold oil leases (one of which was in a place known as Teapot Dome, which gave its name to the ensuing scandal) in return for $400,000 in "loans". Later on, the Coolidge administration (described as being "dedicated to inactivity" [p89]) included Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (today commemorated in the name of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh), who introduced tax cuts which "conveniently enhanced his own wealth", had the IRS send its best men to prepare his tax returns so that he paid as little as possible, and asked the Secretary of State to help one of his companies secure a lucrative Chinese contract. Such accounts illustrate the value of reading about history (particularly in such an enjoyable book as this), because "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Indeed.
Review: In seinem neuesten Buch konzentriert sich Bill Bryson auf den Sommer von 1927 (wobei "Sommer" hier großzügig von Mai bis September geht), in dem ungewöhnlich viele Ereignisse geschehen sind, von denen er berichtet: Allen voran natürlich Lindbergs Flug über den Atlantik, aber auch die Exekution von Sacco & Vancetti, der berühmte Kampf zwischen Dempsey und Tunney, die Arbeiten an Mount Rushmore begonnen, der geistige Vater der Prohibtion stirbt, die Rechtsgrundlage für die Festnahme Al Capones wird gelegt, Babe Ruth hat sein bestes Baseball-Jahr, ein Verrückter sprengt eine Grundschule in die Lift (55 Kinder sterben), das Fernsehen wird erfunden... Und über all das berichtet Bryson. Dabei geht er druchaus geschickt vor: Die Ereignisse werden monatsweise (also chronologisch) präsentiert, jeder Monat ist aber in zahlreiche Kapitel unterteilt, in denen er sich einem Ereigniss intensiver widmet - inklusive der Vor- und Nachgeschichte. Dabei hilft ihm das Format deutlich fokussierter zu erzählen, als er das normalerweise tut. Zwar flechtet er nach wie vor immer wieder seine berühmten Anekdoten ein, aber schon aufgrund der Chronologie, kehrt er immer wieder zum eigentlichen Thema zurück (Wem also störte, dass bei "At Home" bei Kapitelende nicht mehr klar war, um was es bei Kapitelanfang eigentlich ging, wird hier also mehr gefallen finden). Ich mag Bill Bryson und auch hier gelingt es ihm wieder Interessante Geschichten zu erzählen, viel neues zu berichten und er hat seinen Blick für obskure Details (und seinen Humor) nicht verloren. Wer die letzten Bücher mochte, wird auch One Summer mögen. Allerdings muss man natürlich wissen, dass es um Amerika geht - die Geschehnisse sind ausgewählt worden, um AMERIKANISCHE Meilensteile hervorzuheben und die 20er Jahre Amerikas darzustellen. Europa bleibt weitestgehend aussen vor. Auch geht es eben eher um die erwähnten Ereignisse, nicht um das Lebensgefühl der einzelnen oder so (auch wenn er gelegentlich darauf eingeht). Mich hat das allerdings nicht gestört!

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #717 in History of the Americas #61,827 in Textbooks & Study Guides |
| Customer reviews | 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (1,761) |
| Dimensions  | 13.13 x 2.77 x 20.27 cm |
| Edition  | Illustrated |
| ISBN-10  | 0767919416 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0767919418 |
| Item weight  | 503 g |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 544 pages |
| Publication date  | 3 June 2014 |
| Publisher  | Anchor |

## Images

![Anchor Books One Summer: America, 1927 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Yaq2+hnEL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by J***N on 9 April 2024*

Bill Bryson takes us back to the USA of a hundred years ago, focussing on the months between May and September 1927 and introducing us to people whom we've probably heard of such as President Calvin Coolidge (and his successor Herbert Hoover), baseball players Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, boxers Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, and aviator Charles Lindberg, who made the first solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris on May 20-21 in the Spirit of St Louis. Digging deeper, he tells us about, for example, Clifford Holland, the designer and chief engineer for the tunnel under the Hudson River which connected Lower Manhattan and Jersey City; the stress of working on this project caused Holland to have a nervous breakdown, followed by a fatal heart attack at the age of 41. The tunnel was named in his memory when it was opened in 1927 (and even though the same fate befell his successor as chief engineer after four months on the job, he received no commemoration). As is characteristic of Bryson's books, this one is packed with eye-catching details like this, including: * the life expectancy of a British pilot in 1917 was put at just eight days [p17] * when Lindberg and Donald Hall, the designer of The Spirit of St Louis, realised they had no idea of how far it was from New York to Paris, they "went to a public library and measured the distance on a globe with a piece of string" [p74] * not only did Babe Ruth famously greet President Coolidge at a match with "Hot as hell, ain't it, Prez?", but he also referred to the holders of a party as the "hostess and hoster" [p181] * during WWI, anti-German sentiment was so rife (following - for example - the sinking of the RMS Lusitania en route from New York to Liverpool) that William Harding, the governor of Iowa, outlawed the public use of foreign languages. This included churches, where Harding proclaimed that "God is listening only to the English tongue" [p228] * one of the problems facing Henry Ford's construction of Fordlandia, a model American community in the jungles of Brazil, was the candiru, a little fish which is alleged to swim into the human urethra and then extend backward-facing spines which made it difficult to extract [p331]. * during a spate of domestic parcel bombing, all the parcels bore a (false) return address of Gimbel Brothers department store in Manhattan. One parcel was returned there for insufficient postage, whereupon the unsuspecting clerk "opened the package, examined the odd contents - bottle of acid, timer, explosives - then packed it all up again, added the necessary postage and mailed it on" [p369]. * John Logie Baird, demonstrator of the world's first live working television system in 1926, so disliked the portly chairman of the board which had been foisted on his company that he narrowed the doorway to his lab, necessitating the chairman to be pushed through from behind when he got stuck on his first (and last) visit [p495]. Such nuggets make this an entertaining and stimulating read. The other thing which struck me was the depth of incompetence, corruption and/or wickedness exhibited by some (not all) of the politicians of the time, culminating in (the admittedly extreme example of) William "Big Bill" Thompson, mayor of Chicago (1915-23, 1927-31), who was openly allied with Al Capone, claimed that George V was intent on annexing Chicago, and set about removing all works deemed treasonous or un-American from the city's schools and libraries. Just as striking was the degree of support which he enjoyed from the voters and - to some extent - the media. Other examples came from the cabinet of Warren Harding, Coolidge's predecessor, in which the military advisor had formerly been his newsboy, the head of the Veteran's Bureau managed to steal or lose $200 million and the interior secretary corruptly sold oil leases (one of which was in a place known as Teapot Dome, which gave its name to the ensuing scandal) in return for $400,000 in "loans". Later on, the Coolidge administration (described as being "dedicated to inactivity" [p89]) included Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (today commemorated in the name of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh), who introduced tax cuts which "conveniently enhanced his own wealth", had the IRS send its best men to prepare his tax returns so that he paid as little as possible, and asked the Secretary of State to help one of his companies secure a lucrative Chinese contract. Such accounts illustrate the value of reading about history (particularly in such an enjoyable book as this), because "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it". Indeed.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by P***R on 22 October 2013*

In seinem neuesten Buch konzentriert sich Bill Bryson auf den Sommer von 1927 (wobei "Sommer" hier großzügig von Mai bis September geht), in dem ungewöhnlich viele Ereignisse geschehen sind, von denen er berichtet: Allen voran natürlich Lindbergs Flug über den Atlantik, aber auch die Exekution von Sacco & Vancetti, der berühmte Kampf zwischen Dempsey und Tunney, die Arbeiten an Mount Rushmore begonnen, der geistige Vater der Prohibtion stirbt, die Rechtsgrundlage für die Festnahme Al Capones wird gelegt, Babe Ruth hat sein bestes Baseball-Jahr, ein Verrückter sprengt eine Grundschule in die Lift (55 Kinder sterben), das Fernsehen wird erfunden... Und über all das berichtet Bryson. Dabei geht er druchaus geschickt vor: Die Ereignisse werden monatsweise (also chronologisch) präsentiert, jeder Monat ist aber in zahlreiche Kapitel unterteilt, in denen er sich einem Ereigniss intensiver widmet - inklusive der Vor- und Nachgeschichte. Dabei hilft ihm das Format deutlich fokussierter zu erzählen, als er das normalerweise tut. Zwar flechtet er nach wie vor immer wieder seine berühmten Anekdoten ein, aber schon aufgrund der Chronologie, kehrt er immer wieder zum eigentlichen Thema zurück (Wem also störte, dass bei "At Home" bei Kapitelende nicht mehr klar war, um was es bei Kapitelanfang eigentlich ging, wird hier also mehr gefallen finden). Ich mag Bill Bryson und auch hier gelingt es ihm wieder Interessante Geschichten zu erzählen, viel neues zu berichten und er hat seinen Blick für obskure Details (und seinen Humor) nicht verloren. Wer die letzten Bücher mochte, wird auch One Summer mögen. Allerdings muss man natürlich wissen, dass es um Amerika geht - die Geschehnisse sind ausgewählt worden, um AMERIKANISCHE Meilensteile hervorzuheben und die 20er Jahre Amerikas darzustellen. Europa bleibt weitestgehend aussen vor. Auch geht es eben eher um die erwähnten Ereignisse, nicht um das Lebensgefühl der einzelnen oder so (auch wenn er gelegentlich darauf eingeht). Mich hat das allerdings nicht gestört!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by P***O on 19 September 2016*

El estilo ameno y divertido de Bryson nos lleva por la historia del apasionante año 27 en Estados Unidos. Un año repleto de hechos históricos en una sociedad moderna y efervescente antes del crack del 29. Ojalá todos los libros de historia fueran así. Totalmente recomendable.

## Frequently Bought Together

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*Last updated: 2026-02-02*