Things are shaping up. I need a couple of more confirmations and we're set!
Eddie and Bill, will you be able perform your assigned roles this week?
Our theme will be: Summer of 1927. This is based on a book, One Summer: America
1927 by Bill
Bryson<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262366-one-summer#:~:text=The%20summer%20of%201927%20began%20with%20one%20of,and%20when%20he%20landed%20in%20Le%20Bourget%20ai>,
that I'm reading about how that summer transformed the U.S. into a world
power. I'll share some of my favorite historical highlights. Here's a
description of the book to give you a taste of what might be in store.
The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth
century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the
Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near
Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the
most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth
was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on
September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable
records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth
Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder
trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly sat atop a
flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days-a new record. The American
South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi
basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the
uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge
interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing
three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone
tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous
reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true "talking picture," Al
Jolson's The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture
industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session
on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a
future crash and depression.
All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927,
and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and
occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling
detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world
stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative
nonfiction of the highest order.
Toastmaster - jeff
Table topics - minjun
GE - andy
1st speaker - jonathan
2nd speaker - revathy
1st evaluator - katelynn
2nd evaluator - Juan
Grammarian/WOD - bill
Timer/Joker - Robin
Inspiration - eddie
Ah counter - Abirame
Quizmaster - luis
