Between 1920 and 1945, America transformed from a nation that had isolated itself from the rest of the world after World War I to the globe's strongest democracy after the Allied victory in World War II. The contributors to this volume explore the events and people that shaped the era.

This volume in Oxford's A Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, readable narrative of the vast span of American history, from the earliest human migrations to the early twenty-first century when the United States loomed as a global power and comprised a complex multi-cultural society of more than 300 million people. The narrative is organized around major interpretive themes, with facts and dates introduced as needed to illustrate these themes. The emphasis throughout is on clarity and accessibility to the interested non-specialist.

In the first half of the twentieth century, white elites who dominated Virginia politics sought to increase state control over African Americans and lower-class whites, whom they saw as oversexed and lacking sexual self-restraint. In order to reaffirm the existing political and social order, white politicians legalized eugenic sterilization, increased state efforts to control venereal disease and prostitution, cracked down on interracial marriage, and enacted statewide movie censorship. Providing a detailed picture of the interaction of sexuality, politics, and public policy, Pippa Holloway explores how these measures were passed and enforced. The white elites who sought to expand government's role in regulating sexual behavior had, like most southerners, a tradition of favoring small government, so to justify these new policies, they couched their argument in economic terms: a modern, progressive government could provide optimum conditions for business growth by maintaining a stable social order and a healthy, docile workforce. Holloway's analysis demonstrates that the cultural context that characterized certain populations as sexually dangerous worked in tandem with the political context that denied them the right to vote. This perspective on sexual regulation and the state in Virginia offers further insight into why white elite rule mattered in the development of southern governments.

Local policy in the nation's capital has always influenced national politics. During Reconstruction, black Washingtonians were first to exercise their new franchise. But when congressmen abolished local governance in the 1870s, they set the precedent for southern disfranchisement. In the aftermath of this process, memories of voting and citizenship rights inspired a new generation of Washingtonians to restore local government in their city and lay the foundation for black equality across the nation. And women were at the forefront of this effort. Here Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy tells the story of how African American women in D.C. transformed civil rights politics in their freedom struggles between 1920 and 1945. Even though no resident of the nation's capital could vote, black women seized on their conspicuous location to testify in Congress, lobby politicians, and stage protests to secure racial justice, both in Washington and across the nation. Women crafted a broad vision of citizenship rights that put economic justice, physical safety, and legal equality at the forefront of their political campaigns. Black women's civil rights tactics and victories in Washington, D.C., shaped the national postwar black freedom struggle in ways that still resonate today.

Examining the cultual norms of women after Suffrage to define labor based on color.

The colonial setting -- Morality instruction -- Ethics and politics -- Language and literacy -- The questions of women -- Perceptions of the past -- Harmony and struggle -- Knowledge power -- Learning from experience -- Conclusion.

The Dancer's World 1920-1945 focuses on modern dancers as they saw themselves. Five chapters describe a narrative arc that encompasses Europe and the USA with a focus between 1920 and 1945. A final chapter considers contemporary relevance for dancers, dance artists, choreographers, dance students and scholars alike.

Images of teenage girls in poodle skirts dominated American popular culture on the 1950's. But as Kelly Schrum shows, teenage girls were swooning over pop idols and using their allowances to buy the latest fashions well beforehand. After World War I, a teenage identity arose in the US, as well as a consumer culture geared toward it. From fashion and beauty to music and movies, high school girls both consumed and influenced what manufacturers, marketers, and retailers offered to them. Examining both national trends and individual lives, Schrum looks at the relationship between the power of consumer culture and the ability of girls to selectively accept, reject, and appropriate consumer goods. Lavishly illustrated with images from advertisements, catalogs, and high school year books, Some Wore Bobby Sox is a unique and fascinating cultural history of teenage girl culture in the middle of the century.

The expressway network in Europe developed into an essential infrastructure of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century and provided means of commuting, as well as accommodated leisure travel and the cargo supply for the mass consumption society. This book discusses, how expressways were developed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on the various forerunner projects and the role of the Hafraba association, which has been significant in the Hessian region, with its actors in Kassel, Frankfurt and Darmstadt. It is shown, how the Autobahn concept developed, from the Italian expressways to the Bonn-Cologne Autobahn and to the design of the Nazi Autobahn project. The Bonn-Cologne Autobahn was the first Autobahn in Germany, opened in 1932 by Konrad Adenauer, later Chancellor of West-Germany. This Autobahn section is here explored for the first time. As part of the Nazi Mega Project various regional legs are explored and for the first time drawn to scholary attention: The leg Frankfurt-Kassel-Göttingen, the leg Frankfurt-Darmstadt-Heidelberg-Karlsruhe and the leg Munich-Salzburg. The goals of the Nazi mega project are evaluated. Further the book shows, how traffic on the Autobahn developed and which experiences were made by driving on the Autobahn. The book discusses various approaches towards a theory on infrastructure.