One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I wish Bill Bryson had been my history teacher! I don’t care for politics, sports, or even history all that much, but Bryson is such a good storyteller that I devoured this book. It was interesting and compelling from word one. Bryson includes obscure facts, points out irony, and ties events together in ways that had never occurred to me. Great read!

Quotes:

“Flying was poorly paid, wildly unsafe, and unreliable as a career – and nowhere were those three unhappy qualities more evident than in the United States” (p. 42).

“No place in the world was less hospitable to a speeding convoy than New York in the 1920s” (p. 82).

“By the summer of 1927, it seemed as if it could sink no lower. Then it sank lower” (p. 198).

“Chicago was to corruption what Pittsburgh was to steel or Hollywood to motion pictures” (p. 403).