American History Since 1877

Chapter 23
Modern Times, 1920-1932

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These resources have been selected by librarians to supplement HSTY202 classes (American History from 1877) at Tompkins Cortland Community College.

• Gale Virtual Reference Collection
• Books and eBooks in TC3 Collection
• Subject Headings
• Multimedia
• Locating Journal Articles in Databases
• Web Resources

Gale Virtual Reference Collection

TC3 students and staff have access to the Gale Virtual Reference Library which has over 250 academic reference encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. This is a good place to start your research because it provides useful background information.

Books and eBooks in the TC3 Collection

• Burden of Time: the Fugitives and Agrarians: the Nashville Groups of the 1920's and 1930's, and the Writing of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren [PS255.N3 S7]
• Coney Island: the People's Playground [O-SIZE F129.C75 I46 2002] - Photodocumentary of the history of Coney Island amusement park from the early 19th century to 2001.
• Culture of the Twenties [E169.1 .B226]
• Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920's [HC106.3 .P73]
• Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance [REF PS153.N5 A24]
• Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America [REF GV53 .E53 2004 v.1]
• Father of the Blues; an Autobiography [ML410 .H3]- Autobiography of W.C. Handy (1873-1958). - Primary Source.
• Fun and Games in Twentieth-century America: a Historical Guide to Leisure [GV53 .G56 2003]
• Girl on the Magazine Cover: the Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media [P94.5.W652 U655 2001]
• Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968 [O-SIZE F128.68.H3 S3] - "This book is a hard-cover edition of the catalogue prepared for the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit 'Harlem on My Mind.'" Contains primary source materials, e.g. images and articles from newspapers 1900 - 1968.
• Harlem: the Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930 [HT123 .S3]
• Jazz City: the Impact of our Cities on the Development of Jazz [ML3561.J3 O84]
• Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920's [F867 .S82 1990]
• Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness; the 1920's: Three Harlem Renaissance Authors [PS508.N3 B73]
• Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age [TL152.52 .S3 1991]
• The Twenties: Fords, Flappers, & Fanatics [E169.1 .M935]

Don't hesitate to ask a reference librarian for help in locating other books owned by us or for help in using WorldCat, the wordwide database of library books and materials that you can use to interlibrary books owned by other libraries.

Subject Headings

Try these suggested subject headings to find books on Modern Times: the 1920's in the TC3 Library Catalog and/or WorldCat.

• Harlem Renaissance
• Jazz

Multimedia

• Golden Twenties [Motion picture]/March of Time [Media E784 .G6 pt.1] [Media E784 .G6 pt.2]
  Recalls the historic events, fashions, and personalities in the news during the 1920s.
• Target: Mafia — The Prohibition Years - "This American Justice program traces the origins of organized crime in the U.S., from the Irish bootleggers to the arrival of the Italian Mafia, which cracked down on the Irish and Jewish gangs. Distributed by A&E Television Networks." (45 minutes). Streaming video from Films on Demand.
• The Twenties - "Nineteen Americans who lived through those years talk about their lives in the 1920s. From labor strikes to the Scopes trial to the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. from poverty to racial segregation to political scandals." From the series A Walk Through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers (52 minutes). Streaming video from Films on Demand.

Locating Journal Articles in Databases

History-related electronic journals are available to TC3 students and staff in our electronic databases and in our list of full-text electronic journals by title & Subject.

Web Resources

• Ad*Access - Image database of over 7,000 advertisements printed mainly in U.S. newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
• An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Materials, Ca. 1490-1920 - Library of Congress, Music Divison, presents a collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress, including Ella Gardner's "Public Dance Halls, their Regulation and Place in the Recreation of Adolescents." The site "also includes a significant number of antidance manuals, histories, treatises on etiquette, and items from other conceptual categories."
• American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment: 1870-1920 - "The American Variety Stage is a multimedia anthology selected from various Library of Congress holdings. This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920."
• Club Kaycee, Golden Age of Kansas City Jazz - Miller Nichols Library, University of Missouri- Kansas City, kansascity.com and The Kansas City Star presents the "sights and sounds of the Golden Age of Kansas City Jazz."
• Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1920-1929 - This American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress "...is particularly strong in advertising and mass-marketing materials and will be of special interest to those seeking to understand economic and political forces at work in the 1920s."
• Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine - Vintage music from the early decades of the 20th Century.
• George Grantham Bain Collection - Online collection of the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies." Emphasis is on New York City ca. 1900-1920; however, "scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s." From the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
• Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro - Here is a presentation of the March 1925 issue of "Survey Graphic," "the premier journal of social work in America in the 1920s ... a special issue devoted to the African American 'Renaissance' underway in Harlem... ."
• Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies - "Features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles."
• Medicine and Madison Avenue
  "Images and database information for approximately 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines. These ads illustrate the variety and evolution of marketing images from the 1910s through the 1950s."
• Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923 - "Searchable database of 16,000 objects representing archival materials" including newpaper clippings, photographs and promotional shots, music sheets, publicity posters and lobby cards.
• Red Hot Jazz Archive: A History of Jazz before 1930 - Online archive of books and audio recordings for the study and enjoyment of the early days of Jazz.
• Showroom of Automotive History - Collection of photographs, advertisements, specifications and sales literature for vehicles from 1896-1986, including the Quadricycle, the Duryea, the Model T, etc. from the Henry Ford Museum.
• Studs Terkel: Conversations with America: Recordings from Division Street - Twentieth century urban life in and around Chicago.
• Women Working, 1870-1930 - "Focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images."

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Last update: Monday, March 21, 2011