
Discover what made the Twenties roar with this sensational retrospective. Ranging from the end of the First World War to the New Deal, it portrays the lawless era in which old traditions were discarded and the nation went on a binge that changed American life forever.
This colorful and informative year-by-year jaunt through the 1920s covers politics, crime, arts, sports, society, and culture. Hundreds of photographs depict the era’s most noteworthy events and personalities, including gangsters, flappers, and movie stars.
Written by a former executive editor of the New York Post, this pictorial history offers candid, entertaining appraisals that recapture the riotous spirit of the decade.
Fascinating vignettes chronicle the rise of speakeasies and bootleggers, the proliferation of dance crazes, high-speed automobiles, and Ponzi schemes, and dramatic incidents such as Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the Scopes Monkey Trial. A century later, readers will find a familiar resonance in these chronicles of a scandal-ridden and celebrity-obsessed culture.
This site is excerpted from The Lawless Decade.
In 2010, The Lawless Decade was published in trade paperback by Dover Publications. The Lawless Decade: Bullets, Broads & Bathtub Gin is a reprint of the author’s original Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1957 edition, with a new introduction by the author’s son, Howard V. Sann.
The lawless decade : a pictorial history of a great American transition: from the World War armistice and prohibition to repeal and the New Deal
- Uncle Sam’s Water Wagon
- The Red Raids
- One Born Every Minute
- Say It Ain’t True, Joe
- The Rise and Fall of Big Jim
- The Birth of Radio
- Let’s Dance
- It Happened in 1920…
- Gee, What A President He’d Make!
- The Million-Dollar Gate
- Known But To God
- A Free Soul in Jail
- It Happened in 1921…
- Sand, Sex and Scandal
- The Strange Death of William Desmond Taylor
- Hollywood Goes Moral
- The Man in the Padded Room
- It Happened in 1922…
- Mr. Coolidge Prays
- Bloodshed on the Common
- Keep Cool With Coolidge
- Big Boom in the West
- John Barleycorn: Outlaw
- The Broken Butterfly
- It Happened in 1923…
- Murder For Fun
- Brute Force: Red Grange
- Dion O’Banion: Altar Boy Gone Wrong
- The Florida Bubble
- It Happened in 1924…
- Mr. Torrio, Chairman of the Board
- F. Scott Fitzgerald — Paradise and Zelda
- The Word, the Book and Mister Bryan
- The Hero Dog…
- It Happened in 1925…
- Hello, Sucker
- The House of Morgan (Helen)
- Joe Sent Me
- Al Smith — Brown Derby to Silk Hat
- Three Bad Boys
- Owney Madden and Some Supporting Players
- It Happened in 1928…