Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

by Frederick Lewis Allen

The national mind had become as never before an instrument upon which a few men could play.

Just as it began to be clear that a wholesale deflation was inevitable, two hurricanes showed what a Soothing Tropic Wind could do when it got a running start from the West Indies.

“I am now definitely ready to announce that Sex, as a theatrical property, is as tiresome as the Old Mortgage, and that I don’t want to hear it mentioned ever again.… I am sick of rebellious youth and I am sick of Victorian parents and I don’t care if all the little girls in all sections of the United States get ruined or want to get ruined or keep from getting ruined. All I ask is: don’t write plays about it and ask me to sit through them.”