This month's discussion will cover Flapper by Joshua Zeitz. 

About the book: 

Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920s puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture.

Whisking us from the Alabama country club where Zelda Sayre first caught the eye of F. Scott Fitzgerald to Muncie, Indiana, where would-be flappers begged their mothers for silk stockings, to the Manhattan speakeasies where patrons partied till daybreak, historian Joshua Zeitz brings the era to exhilarating life. This is the story of America’s first sexual revolution, its first merchants of cool, its first celebrities, and its most sparkling advertisement for the right to pursue happiness.

The men and women who made the flapper were a diverse lot. There was Coco Chanel, the French orphan who redefined the feminine form and silhouette, helping to free women from the torturous corsets and crinolines that had served as tools of social control. Three thousand miles away, Lois Long, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, christened herself “Lipstick” and gave New Yorker readers a thrilling entrée into Manhattan’s extravagant Jazz Age nightlife.

In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America’s first celebrities—Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate—fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers. Dallas-born fashion artist Gordon Conway and Utah-born cartoonist John Held crafted magazine covers that captured the electricity of the social revolution sweeping the United States. Bruce Barton and Edward Bernays, pioneers of advertising and public relations, taught big business how to harness the dreams and anxieties of a newly industrial America—and a nation of consumers was born.

Towering above all were Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, whose swift ascent and spectacular fall embodied the glamour and excess of the era that would come to an abrupt end on Black Tuesday, when the stock market collapsed and rendered the age of abundance and frivolity instantly obsolete. With its heady cocktail of storytelling and big ideas, Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who launched the first truly modern decade.

The Coolidge Museum at Forbes Library has started a new book group in 2024 to focus of reading women's history and social history.  

As her husband John met in Philadelphia to discuss forming a new nation, Abigail Adams wrote to implore him, 'I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.' Alas, it would be another 150 years before they even got the right to vote. But women were neither silent nor passive then or now.

To elevate the voices of women in American history, a new book club is being offered by the The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum. The inspiration for the club, Herstory: Women in American History, came from some members of the museum's Presidential Book Club, who expressed a desire to read more about the context of historical figures, and to hear from and about the women involved in the building of our nation. 

Selections in the book club will include biographies of women interspersed with texts on significant periods in American history. This way, book club members can place the women they read about in context and gain a fuller understanding of their challenges and achievements.

This group meets on Zoom on the 2nd Wednesday of the month at 7:30 PM 

This group is moderated by Coolidge Museum Committee members Leslie Skantz-Hodgson (Smith Vocational School Librarian) and Rob Weir (retired professor of history).  

To join the email list or for more information, email Coolidge@forbeslibrary.org