American Chronicle: Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century

by Lois and Alan Gordon

Yale University Press, 1,024 pp., $49.95

American Chronicle: Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century is a cross between an effort to capitalize on premature millennial madness and an encyclopedic journey through American lore. The book begins with an essay overview of each decade, followed by statistics and lists of various aspects of life in each year of the decade. The text is also interspersed with 1,004 black-and-white photographs, visual aids rather than an attempt at a visual chronicle of the century. The essays are oddly edited, with the Forties having three paragraphs on baseball and six on a small skirmish called “World War II.” The year-by-year capsules, lists, and statistics are its crowning glory, a sorted and organized Trivial Pursuit game honoring the minutiae of 100 years. While 1,000 pages might seem steep for a span of a century, the ability to win any argument with this heavily indexed tome makes it worth its weight.

This article appears in December 24 • 1999.

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