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BOOKS

Listed here below are only a smattering of essential books to get you started, because once you delve into the Jazz Age life, you will be discovering new books for the rest of your natural life.

Architecture/Art Deco

The Art Deco Society of New York has compiled an exhaustive list of books on every aspect of Art Deco. You can find it here:

 

https://www.artdeco.org/art-deco-book-list

 

Jeepers! What a list! Just in case you can’t spend your whole life reading, the Jazz Age Junkie can help. Here are a few books to get you started.

  • Deco by the Bay, Michael F. Crowe (1995)

 

  • San Francisco Art Deco, Michael F. Crowe, Robert W. Bowen (2007)

 

  • Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger, Therese Poletti, Tom Paiva (2008)

 

  • New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture, Anthony W. Robins (2017)

 

  • Skyscraper Style, Cervin Robinson (1975)

 

  • American Art Deco, Eva Weber (1995)

 

  • Art Deco of the 20s and 30s, Bevis Hillier (originally published in 1968, paperback edition 2024)

 

  • Art Deco Style, Bevis Hillier and Stephen Escritt (1997)

 

  • Art Deco, Young Mi Kim (1997)

(Beautiful photos of Art Deco furnishings)

 

  • The Art Deco House: Avant-garde Houses of the 1920s and 1930s, Adrian Tinniswood (2002)

Jazz

  • Jazz: A History of America’s Music, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (2001)

  • History of Jazz, Ted Gioia (2021)

  • Visions of Jazz, Gary Giddins (1998)

History

  • Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties, Lucy Moore (2010)

  • Good Life in Hard Times: San Francisco in the ‘20s & ‘30s, Jerry Flamm (1999)

  • Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, Frederick Lewis Allen (1931)

  • Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America, Frederick Lewis Allen (1940)

  • The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (2015)

  • The Golden Moments of Paris: A Guide to the Paris of the 1920s, John Baxter (2014)

  • When Paris Sizzled, Mary McAuliffe (2016)

Art/Artists

Film

  • Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, Mick LaSalle (2000)

  • Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, Mick LaSalle (2002)

  • Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince, Budd Schulberg (1981)

  • Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood, Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers (1985)

Fashion

  • Fashion Sourcebook 1920s, edited by Charlotte Fiell & Emmanuelle Dirix

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  • 1920s Fashions From B. Altman & Company, B. Altman & Co.

          A compendium of B. Altman fashions  that illustrates the radical change in                      styles that occured during the course of the decade.

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  • Fabulous Fashions of the 1920s and Fabulous Fashions of the 1930s, Felicia Lowenstein Niven (2011)

           These are books for teens, but fun for everyone, with lots of images.

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  • 1920s Jazz Age Fashion & Photographs, Martin Pel (2016)

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  • 1920s Style: How To Get the Look of the Decade, Caroline Cox (2013)

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Cocktails

  • Drinking the Devil’s Acre: A Love Letter From San Francisco and Her Cocktails, Dugan McDonnell (2015)

  • Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails, Harry MacElhone (circa 1920)

  • Jazz Age Cocktails: History, Lore and Recipes from America’s Roaring Twenties, Cecelia Tichi (2021)

  • San Francisco Cocktails, Trevor Felch (2021)

  • The Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Cradock (1930)

  • Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh aka Dr. Cocktail (2009)

Fiction

  • Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1934) or any of the 22 or so Hercule Poirot mysteries written between 1920 and 1940.

  • And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (1939)

  • Ask the Dust, John Fante (1939)

  • Show Boat, Edna Ferber (1926)

  • The Great Gatsby (1925), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), and everything else written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was Fitzgerald who gave the Jazz Age its name (or at least popularized it) and whose life with Zelda exemplified it (the good and the bad).

  • Gatsby Spinoffs

            Ever since the copyright on The Great Gatsby expired in 2021, authors have been busy writing                  versions from different viewpoints in diverse genres. I'm not saying they're good. I'm just sayin'.              Here are a few:

           The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo; Beutiful Little Fools, Jillian Cantor; Nick, Michael Farris                 Smith; Jay the Great, Benjamin Frost; Jake, Reinvented; The Gay Gatsby, B.A.Baker; Agent Gatz: A             Great Gatsby Prequel, R.M. Spencer; The Gatsby Gambit, Claire Anderson-Wheeler

  • The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (1930)

  • The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels, Dashiell Hammett (1989)

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

  • Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood (1939)

  • Passing, Nella Larsen (1929)

  • Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)

  • The Code of the Woosters (1938) or Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), P.G. Wodehouse

Nonfiction/Memoir

  •  A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (1964)  

             Hemingway's classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s.

 

  • ​Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince, Budd Schulberg  (1981)

             Budd Schulberg, who was the son of B. P. Schulberg, head of production at  Paramount                        Pictures in the 1920s, tells us what it was like to rub shoulders with the greatest stars of                   the era.

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  • This Must Be the Place, Morrill Cody and Jimmie Charters (1934)

    Jimmie reminisces about les années folles in Montparnasse, where he tended bar at the          Dingo American Bar.

 

  • The Women of Montparnasse, Morrill Cody with Hugh Ford (1984)

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