The years between the first world war and the great stock market crash marked the arrival of the United States of America as a world military, business, scientific, and cultural leader. Americans from all stripes and in all fields achieved great notoriety. Babe Ruth, Margaret Sanger, Duke Ellington, Alfred Stieglitz, Aimee Semple McPherson, Woodrow Wilson, Clarence Darrow, Langston Hughes, and Henry Ford are just a few of the luminaries who shined on the world’s stage. Combining substantial biographical accounts of 60 Americans who influenced or represented their times with portraits and other photographs and up to five often hard-to-find primary documents written by or relating to the subject, Lifetimes offers readers a comprehensive account of the person’s life and work and first-hand accounts of what they thought and what other people thought about them. This all-in-one biographical resource is perfect for students and anyone interested in this pivotal era in American history.

Among the Americans included in the volume who made a profound impact on society are music greats Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, and Bessie Smith; sports stars Jack Dempsey, Knute Rockne, and Helen Wills; writer Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway; scientists or inventors Edwin Armstrong and George and Gladys Dick; leaders for women’s rights Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul; social and political leaders Emma Goldman, Marcus Garvey, and Eugene Debs; movie stars Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, and Anna May Wong, and notorious figures like Al Capone or Sacco and Vanzetti. Each entry contains a biography of 750-1500 words, the portrait, other photographs, primary documents featuring items such as Al Smith’s response to charges that he was not fit to be president because he was Catholic, or the NAACP’s attack on the racial stereotypes portrayed in D.W. Griffith’s epic, Birth of a Nation, and sources for further reading. The volume ends with an analytical index.