The Devil in Babylon

What should the modern world look like? Who should be its leaders? And what values should it embrace? We have never wrestled over these questions more than in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Allan Levine's newest book chronicles this wide-ranging emotional and moral conflict by focusing on the people who lived through this turbulent era: an array of personalities -- traditionalists as well as progressives, the powerful and the powerless -- who, for better or worse, shaped the contours of contemporary North American society. Among them were anarchist Emma Goldman, prohibitionist and creationist William Jennings Bryan, women's rights campaigner Nellie McClung, and gangster Al Capone. Their personal experiences are set against the heated debate about the impact of immigration, the role of women, the conflict between science and religion, the influence of Hollywood, and the changing attitudes about sex--issues that preoccupied, and even consumed, North Americans of all classes. In a lucid though not terribly original account, Canadian historian Levine charts the reform efforts of the early 20th century. Woman suffrage, prohibition, organized labor, regulation of the sex trade-these political movements don't fit neatly into today's red state/blue state categories, but they were each part of the fin-de-siecle vision of a society rid of physical and moral ills. Cities took on great symbolic value: some activists believed cities to be seedy and dissolute; others saw the urban landscape as a place of promise and cultural experimentation. New immigrants flocked to North American cities, and reformers like Jane Addams helped them assimilate into American culture and learn American values (which, as Levine points out, were white, middle-class values). Eugenics was also on the rise; scientists and policy makers alike sought to breed better citizens, in part by sterilizing the supposedly unfit. Levine's rendition of this familiar history is made fresh only by his integration of the U.S. and Canada into one story. Canadians, he argues , often "studied American solutions" to problems that both countries faced. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Year

2005

Language

English

Publisher

McClelland & Stewart

Editions

1

Pages

448

ISBN

9780771052736

Data source: Wikidata