IRB Media Summary of Bill Bryson's One Summer

Annotation

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. #1 On 20 March 1927, a family in Queens Village, New York, was murdered. The New York Times reported on the case, which became known as the Sash Weight Murder Case. The two villains left a clue in the form of an Italian-language newspaper on a table downstairs.#2 The 1920s was a great time for reading in America. Each year, American publishers produced 110 million books, more than ten thousand separate titles. For those who felt daunted by such a welter of literary possibility, a new phenomenon called the book club had just debuted.#3 The 1920s was a golden age for newspapers. News circulation in the decade rose by about a fifth, to 36 million copies a day.#4 The success of Hearst's newspaper, the Daily Mirror, and Macfadden's magazine, the Evening Graphic, led to imitators. The Graphic was the creation of an eccentric bushy-haired businessman named Bernarr Macfadden, who was strongly devoted to body-building and the rights of commuters to a decent railroad service.