Editor’s Note: This year, our Half Price Books calendar once again features lists of books, movies and music. We’re heading into a new decade with a new focus…the past. Each month, we’ll share a list of events, inventions and, of course, books, movies and music, from every decade since the 1900s right here on the blog. Enjoy!
Something cool came along when jazz was introduced to the masses and the literary scene got a leg up from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Get a good look at the grandstanding books, music and movies from the decade that left dancers flapping in the wind…see what we did there? You guessed it. It’s the 1920s!
BOOKS
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Weary Blues – Langston Hughes
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
MUSIC
The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings – Louis Armstrong
Queen of the Blues, Vol. 1 – Bessie Smith
Complete Recordings, 1922-1925 – New Orleans Rhythm Kings
Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin
King of the Country Blues – Blind Lemon Jefferson
The Complete Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers
The Best of Early Ellington – Duke Ellington
MOVIES
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Jazz Singer
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Steamboat Willie
Nosferatu
The Kid
The Gold Rush
Battleship Potemkin
EVENTS
1920 Women win right to vote
1920 Prohibition enacted
1922 King Tut’s tomb discovered
1923 Louis Armstrong’s first recording
1924 First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC
1925 Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby
1926 NBC is founded
1927 Charles Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic
1929 Wall Street Crash starts Great Depression
We’d say that list was roaring success. …see what we did there? Check back for more interesting finds and signs of the times for our next decade! …and while you’re waiting, let us know a few of your favorite early 1900s-era books, music and movies in the comments.