In The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, historian Harvey Green provides an overview of some of the most significant social changes that shaped American life from the beginning of World War I to the end of World War II. During this period, the U.S. underwent vast political, economic, and diplomatic change. Numerous histories and historians have addressed these changes . Fewer historical studies have appeared of the ways in which the lives of average Americans were changed in sometimes subtle and sometimes drastic ways. The time period covered by Green saw the sexual revolution of the 1920s, the Great Depression, and two world wars.

Green illustrates changes in patterns of work and play, in family interaction, in the ways Americans cooked thier food and cleaned their homes. These everyday changes, visible to those who live through them, are often less noticed by historians by the "larger" changes in politics. But these changes are no less significant; in fact, one could argue as they affect all people living in a society, they may be even more significant than the more-chronicled political changes that often receive more notice in histories of the period.

Questions to Think About:

1) What is Green's thesis in this study? What is the overarching conclusion he reaches about the nature of uncertainty in everyday life during this period? What does Green identify as the cause of this uncertainty?

2) Does Green, in your opinion, see uncertainty as a negative state? What evidence can you gather from his book to support your opinion?

3) By reading Green's footnotes, you can construct an overview of the historiography--the ways historians have written about--this period of history. What are the major turning points in that historiography? How does Green support and challenge interpretations that have come before his?

4) What were the significant turning points during the period from 1914 to 1945, according to Green? Does he discount any events that you feel were more significant than he does? Does he overstress any events you believe were less significant?

5) What are the themes around which Green organizes his history?

6) How does Green present the changes in work patterns in the chapter he entitles, "Work, Struggle, Intolerance"? Does he see the major direction of these changes as positive or as negative? Who are the heroes, and who the victims, of this chapter?

7) To what does Green attribute the stock market crash in 1929? How does his perspective fit with or challenge other historians' views of the causes of the crash? What, according to Green, was the "triumph" of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency?

8) How did ideas about family change during this period, according to Green? Why did these changes take place? What were the particular uncertainties to which these changes sought to respond?

9) One of the themes of Green's history is that the pace at which everyday life changed sped up dramatically during the period from 1914 to 1945. What altered the pace of social change?

10) Historians often use a "synecdoche," or a small part which represents the whole, to tell a larger story. Green uses influenza and the crusade against it as a synecdoche for larger struggles and crusades. What is the usefulness of using such a synecdoche? How successfully does Green use it?

11) In this course, we will spend some time focusing on popular culture, which was transformed by and itself transformed American society during this period. Drawing on Green's argument, why did films have such a broad appeal during this period? What can we, as historians, learn from popular entertainments--radio and film especially--when we try to reconstruct what happened in the past? What important information gets left out, and how can we fill in those gaps?

Further resources for studying everyday life in the years from 1914-1945:

For an overview of modernism in America, check out the Modernism Timeline, 1890-1940.

Check out the Library of Congress's American Memory Project's Built in America, 1933-Present site, dedicated to presenting American architectural heritages from the Great Depression to today; and the Architecture and Interior Design photographs of Gottscho and Schleisner.

At the National Archives, you can view the Zimmerman telegram, in both coded and decoded versions.

The World War I - Trenches on the Web site.

To hear some recordings of speeches from the era, see the Library of Congress's American Memory Project's Recordings from WWI and the 1920 Election site.

To see what an American city--in this case, Washington, DC--was like during the era, see the Library of Congress's American Memory Project's Washington as it Was, 1923-1959 site.

See the National Archive's exhibit of the verdict against gangster Al "Scarface" Capone.

Check out Eleanor Roosevelt's letter of resignation from the Daughters of the American Revolution, after they prevented Marian Anderson from performing at Constitution Hall.

The Library of Congress's American Memory Project's WPA's Life Histories Project from 1936-1940 project provides access to everyday life in the period. A good introduction to the WPA project is Voices from the Thirties: An Introduction to the Life Histories Project.

Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for History 339 (Themes in U.S. History, 1914-1945), The Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York. Send email to lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu
Fall Semester 1997. Last modified: Thursday 23 October 1997