| Synopsis: |
This text is both a personal memoir and an interpretation of the critical quarter-century in which present-day America was shaped. Some of the most celebrated names of the era - including H.L. Mencken, Alfred A. Knopf, Malcolm Cowley, Michael Gold, John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammet, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joe McCarthy and Harry S. Truman - are discussed here. These are some of the people whom Bernard Smith met and with whom he interacted. They themselves, and the social, political and cultural trends they represented, are regarded from a frankly leftist viewpoint. Adopting the stance that this point of view has recently become an uncommon way of looking at those tumultous years, the book aims to offer a supplement to more formal histories of this seminal period. |