Eric Burns

Acclaimed author Eric Burns investigates the year of 1920, which was not only a crucial twelve-month period of its own, but one that foretold the future, foreshadowing the rest of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st, whether it was Sacco and Vanzetti or the stock market crash that brought this era to a close.

Eleanor Roosevelt is viewed as one of the most pioneering women in American history. But she was also one of the most enigmatic and lonely. Her loveless marriage with FDR was no secret, and she had a cold relationship with most of her family, as well, from her distant mother to her public rivalry with her cousin, Alice. Yet she was a warm person, beloved by friends, and her humanitarian work still influences the world today. But who shaped Eleanor?...

You really can't believe everything you read . . . A premature newswire report announces the end of World War I, spurring wild celebrations in American streets days before the actual treaty was signed. A St. Louis newspaper prints reviews of theatrical performances that never took place-they had been canceled due to bad weather. New York newspaper reporters plant evidence in the apartment of the man accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and then...

In 1957, America turned its back on its earlier self and jumped headlong into the nation it has become today. From Sputnik and the beginning of the space race to Little Richard and the underappreciated influence of rock n' roll in bringing blacks and whites closer together, to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, which forever changed the landscape, 1957 represents the year when all of the energy and anxiety that had followed the end of...

Eleanor Roosevelt's loveless marriage with FDR was no secret, and she had a cold relationship with most of her family, as well. Yet she was a warm person, beloved by friends, and her humanitarian work still influences the world today. Burns shows how Eleanor was shaped by her father Elliott, a lost spirit with a bittersweet story. Brother to Theodore Roosevelt, Elliot would eventually succumb to alcoholism and would be exiled to the Virginia countryside....

"In 1957, America turned its back on its earlier self and jumped headlong into the nation it has become today. From Sputnik and the beginning of the space race to Little Richard and the underappreciated influence of rock n' roll in bringing blacks and whites closer together, to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, which forever changed the landscape, 1957 represents the year when all of the energy and anxiety that had followed the end of...