conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled A History of the American People about Times</a, History, Jews</a with the genre: New, Used & Rental Textbooks, Humanities.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author, whose previous works include the distinguished <a href="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060922834/${0}">Modern Times</a> and <a href="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060915331/${0}">A History of the Jews</a> , has produced an epic that spans the history of the American people over the past 400 years. The prolific narrative covers every aspect of U.S. history, from science, customs, religion, and politics to the individual men and women who have helped shape the nation. His detailed, provocative examinations of political and social icons, from Lyndon the author to Norman Rockwell, are especially strong. the author's text is intelligent and rich with detail, and yet extremely accessible for anyone interested in a reinterpretive analysis of America's past.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first three paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A History of the American People
  It is important to grasp that downward mobility was, initially, only a tiny fracture in the smooth monolith of America's upwardly mobile society. Jazz, for instance, was an elite taste in the 1920s. Not until it was simplified, purged, and made respectable by the white bands of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey (becoming 'swing' in the process) did it begin to conquer the masses from 1935 onwards. Then in the 1940s came bop, with black players like Charlie Parker (alto sax), Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Thelonious Monk (piano), and singers like Ella Fitzgerald, doing bebop. There followed 1950s cool, hard bop, soul jazz, rock in the 1960s, and in the 1970s blends of jazz and rock dominated by electronic instruments. And all the time pop music was crowding in to envelop the various styles and traditions in the phantasmagoria of commercial music geared to the taste of countless millions of easily manipulated but increasingly affluent young people. And, from the worlds of jazz and pop, the drug habit spread to the masses as the most accelerated form of downward mobility of all.145
  All this was a cloud no bigger than a child's hand in the 1920s, where critical attention was focussed more on the rise of the American musical, itself a melting-pot amalgam of the Viennese operetta, the French boulevard music-play, the English Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera and music hall--The Beggar's Opera of 1728 was the ultimate ancestor--plus the all-American ingredients of burlesque, minstrel-show, vaudeville (and jazz), becoming in the process a completely new and hugely attractive art-form. The prewar talents of Berlin and Jerome Kern were joined, after the end of the war, by a host of newcomers, some of them close to the genius level: in addition to Gershwin, Richard Rogers, Howard Dietz, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, and E. Y. Harburg. Together they brought the American musical to full flower: Gershwin's Lady Be Good!, the first mature example, opened on December 1, 1924 in the Liberty Theater, starring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. It was an outstanding event of a Broadway season that included forty musicals, such as Kern's Sitting Pretty, Irvin Berlin's Music Box Review, Youmans' Lollypop, The Student Prince, and Sissie and Blake's Chocolate Dandies.146 Twenties New York did not quite have the cultural reclame of Weimar Germany at this time but it was the place where the native creator had the widest range of opportunities and where the expatriate artist was most likely to find the freedom, the means, and the security to express himself.
  The keynote of the 1920s musical was joy, springing from an extraordinary exuberance in the delight of being alive and American. The central paradox of the 1920s--probably the most enjoyable decade in American history--was that America, having voluntarily saddled itself with Prohibition, took to partying on a scale never seen before. Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), who fought his way to the top of the young writers' league during the decade, coined the phrase, soon universal: 'Have a drink.' The Twenties also saw the emergence into open society of a secret drink, first made in California (probably San Francisco) in the 1860s, of gin, sweet vermouth, and angostura. In 1920s New York it was made with minute quantities of dry vermouth and rechristened the Dry Martini. Bernard de Voto called it 'the supreme American gift to world culture.' H. L. Mencken thought it 'the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet.' If not sonnets, then ingenious verses were written to it, including a notable one by Ogden Nash and a quatrain by the 1920s Egeria, Dorothy Parker: 'I like to have a Martini / Two at the very most. / After three I'm under the table. / After four I'm under the host.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'Coolidge's minimalism was not just an expression of a political philosophy, though it was certainly that'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Coolidge's minimalism was not just an expression of a political philosophy, though it was certainly that. As a prosperous nation with a largely self-regulating economy and protected by great natural defenses, America was in a position to follow the advice of Lord Salisbury, who had governed Britain when Coolidge was a young man. 'The country is carried comfortably down the river by the current, and the function of government is merely to put out an oar when there is any danger of its drifting into the bank.' That was the Coolidge philosophy too, but it was more than a philosophy, it was a state of mind, almost a physical compulsion. Coolidge, like the great Queen Elizabeth I of England, was a supreme exponent of masterly inactivity. But he was also, unlike that Queen, who could be talkative at times, a person who devoted much thought and a lifetime of experience to strategies of silence. He got this from his father, but whereas the Colonel was silent by instinct, Coolidge turned it into a political virtue. He rejoiced in his nickname, 'Silent Cal'--it often saved him from taking steps or making statements that might prove counterproductive.
  He practiced this brevity. Often he said nothing whatever. Campaigning in 1924, he noted: 'I don't recall any candidate for president that ever injured himself very much by not talking.' Or again: 'The things I never say never get me into trouble.' When he finally retired he confessed that his most important rule 'consists in never doing anything that someone else can do for you.' He added: 'Nine-tenths of a president's callers at the White House want something they ought not to have. If you keep dead still they will run out in three or four minutes.' Coolidge was usually silent, but slight twitches in his facial muscles spoke for him. He was described as 'an eloquent listener.'
  Yet when he did speak, what he said was always worth hearing. It was direct, pithy, disillusioned, unromantic, and usually true. No one in the 20th century defined more elegantly the limitations of government and the need for individual endeavor, which necessarily involves inequalities, to advance human happiness. Thus: 'Government cannot relieve from toil. The normal must take care of themselves. Self-government means self-support...Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing...History reveals no civilized people among whom there was not a highly educated class and large aggregations of wealth. Large profits mean large payrolls. Inspiration has always come from above.' It was essential, he argued, to judge political morality not by its intentions but by its effects. Thus, in his 1925 inaugural, the key sentence was 'Economy is idealism in its most practical form.'
  Later that year, in an address to the New York Chamber of Commerce, Coolidge produced a classic and lapidary statement of his laissez-faire philosophy. Government and business, he said, should remain independent and separate, one directed from Washington, the other from New York. Wise and prudent men should always prevent the mutual usurpations which foolish men sought on either side. Business was the pursuit of gain but it also had a moral purpose: 'the mutual organized effort of society to minister to the economic requirement of civilization...It rests squarely on the law of service. It has for its main reliance truth and faith and justice. In its larger sense it is one of the greatest contributing forces to the moral and spiritual advancement of the race.' That was why government had a warrant to promote its success by providing the conditions of competition within a framework of security. The job of government and law was to suppress privilege wherever it manifested itself and uphold lawful possession by providing legal remedies for all wrongs: 'The prime element in the value of all property is the knowledge that its peaceful enjoyment will be publicly defended.' Without this legal and public defense 'the value of your tall buildings would shrink to the price of the waterfront of old Carthage or corner-lots in ancient Babylon.' The more business regulated itself, he concluded, the less need there would be for government to act to insure competition. It could therefore concentrate on its twin tasks of economy and of improving the national structure within which business could increase profits and investment, raise wages and provide better goods and services at the lowest possible prices.165
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Thus Coolidge departed, pulling down the curtain on the last genuine capitalist Arcadia. Another myth that has grown up about these times is that the Twenties Boom was a mere drunken spending-spree, bound to end in disaster, and that beneath a veneer of prosperity was an abyss of poverty. That is not true. The prosperity was very widespread. It was not universal. In the farming community it was patchy, and it largely eluded certain older industrial communities, such as the New England textile trade.173 But growth was spectacular. On a 1933-8 index of 100, it was 58 in 1921 and passed 110 in 1929. That involved an increase in national income from $59.4 to $87.2 billion in eight years, with real per-capita income rising from $522 to $716: not Babylonian luxury but a modest comfort never hitherto thought possible.174
  The heart of the consumer boom was in personal transport, which in a vast country, where some of the new cities were already 30 miles across, was not a luxury. At the beginning of 1914, 1,258,062 cars were registered in the US, which produced 569,054 during the year. Production rose to 5,621,715 in 1929, by which time cars registered in the US totaled 26,501,443, five-sixths of the world's production and one car for every five people in the country. This gives some idea of America's global dominance. In 1924 the four leading European car producers turned out only 11 percent of the cars manufactured in America. Even by the end of the decade European registrations were only 20 percent of the US level and production a mere 13 percent.175 The meaning of these figures is that the American working class had acquired the freedom of movement limited hitherto to a section of its middle class, and denied to European workers for another thirty years or more. Meanwhile the middle class was moving into air travel. Air passengers rose from 49,713 in 1920 to 417,505 in 1930 (by 1940 the figure was 3,185,278 and it was nearly 8 million by 1945).176 What the American Twenties demonstrated was the speed with which industrial productivity could transform luxuries into necessities and spread them down the class pyramid.
  In fact, Twenties prosperity was a growing solvent of class and other barriers. Next to automobiles, it was the new electric industry which fueled and reflected the boom. Expenditure on radios rose from a mere $10,648,000 in 1920 to $411,637,000 in 1929, and total electrical product sales tripled in the decade to $2.4 billion.177 The mass radio audience (followed by the talkies) brought about the Americanization of immigrant communities and a new classlessness in dress, speech, and attitudes. Sinclair Lewis, revisiting 'Main Street' on behalf of the Nation in 1924, found two working-class, small-town girls wearing 'well-cut skirts, silk stockings, such shoes as can be bought nowhere in Europe [at the price], quiet blouses, bobbed hair, charming straw hats, and easily cynical expressions terrifying to the awkward man.' One of them served hash. 'Both their dads are Bohemian; old mossbacks, tough old birds with whiskers that can't sling more English than a musk-rat. And yet, in one generation, here's their kids--real queens.'178 The Twenties marked the biggest advance for American women of any decade, before or since. By 1930 there were 10,546,000 women 'gainfully employed' outside the home; the largest number, as before, were in domestic/personal service (3,483,000) but there were now nearly 2 million in clerical work, 1,860,000 in manufacturing, and, most encouraging of all, 1,226,000 in the professions.179 Equally significant were the liberated housewives, the 'Blondies,' to whom their appliances, their cars, and their husband's high wages had brought leisure for the first time.
  The coming of family affluence was reflected in the decline of radical politics and their union base. A 1929 survey quoted a union organizer: 'The Ford car has done an awful lot of harm to the unions, here and everywhere else [in America]. As long as men have enough money to buy a second-hand Ford and tires and gasoline, they'll be out on the road and paying no attention to union meetings.'180 In 1915, 1921, and 1922 the unions lost three key Supreme Court actions, and their 1919 strikes were disasters. The American Federation of Labor membership dropped from a high of 4,078,740 in 1920 to 2,531,261 in 1932. 'Welfare capitalism' provided company sports facilities, holidays with pay, insurance and pension schemes, so that by 1927 4,700,000 workers were covered by group insurance and 1,400,000 were members of company unions. The American worker appeared to be on the threshold of a hitherto unimaginable middle-class existence of personal provision and responsibility which made collective action increasingly superfluous.181
  Reflecting this growth and prosperity, the United States had achieved a position of paramountcy in total world production never before attained during a period of prosperity by any other state: 34.4 percent of the whole, compared with Britain's 10.4, Germany's 10.3, Russia's 9.9, France's 5.0, Japan's 4.0, 2.5 for Italy, 2.1 for Canada, and 1.7 for Poland. The likelihood that Europe, followed by Asia, would soon begin to lean towards what Andre Siegfried called 'America's original social structure' increased with every year the world economy remained buoyant. Granted another decade of prosperity on this scale, the history not just of America but of the entire world would have been vastly different and far more fortunate. But that was not to be. After the election of Herbert Hoover, and during the interregnum in Washington, President Coolidge was asked for a decision on long-term economic policy. He snapped, 'We'll leave that to the Wonder Boy.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: '. He snapped, 'We'll leave that to the Wonder Boy. After the election of Herbert Hoover, and during the interregnum in Washington, President Coolidge was asked for a decision on long-term economic policy. But that was not to be. Granted another decade of prosperity on this scale, the history not just of America but of the entire world would have been vastly different and far more fortunate. The likelihood that Europe, followed by Asia, would soon begin to lean towards what Andre Siegfried called 'America's original social structure' increased with every year the world economy remained buoyant.7 for Poland.1 for Canada, and 1.5 for Italy, 2.0, 2.0, Japan's 4.9, France's 5.3, Russia's 9.4, Germany's 10.4 percent of the whole, compared with Britain's 10.181
  Reflecting this growth and prosperity, the United States had achieved a position of paramountcy in total world production never before attained during a period of prosperity by any other state: 34. The American worker appeared to be on the threshold of a hitherto unimaginable middle-class existence of personal provision and responsibility which made collective action increasingly superfluous. 'Welfare capitalism' provided company sports facilities, holidays with pay, insurance and pension schemes, so that by 1927 4,700,000 workers were covered by group insurance and 1,400,000 were members of company unions. The American Federation of Labor membership dropped from a high of 4,078,740 in 1920 to 2,531,261 in 1932.'180 In 1915, 1921, and 1922 the unions lost three key Supreme Court actions, and their 1919 strikes were disasters. As long as men have enough money to buy a second-hand Ford and tires and gasoline, they'll be out on the road and paying no attention to union meetings. A 1929 survey quoted a union organizer: 'The Ford car has done an awful lot of harm to the unions, here and everywhere else [in America].
  The coming of family affluence was reflected in the decline of radical politics and their union base.179 Equally significant were the liberated housewives, the 'Blondies,' to whom their appliances, their cars, and their husband's high wages had brought leisure for the first time. By 1930 there were 10,546,000 women 'gainfully employed' outside the home; the largest number, as before, were in domestic/personal service (3,483,000) but there were now nearly 2 million in clerical work, 1,860,000 in manufacturing, and, most encouraging of all, 1,226,000 in the professions.'178 The Twenties marked the biggest advance for American women of any decade, before or since. And yet, in one generation, here's their kids--real queens. 'Both their dads are Bohemian; old mossbacks, tough old birds with whiskers that can't sling more English than a musk-rat.' One of them served hash. Sinclair Lewis, revisiting 'Main Street' on behalf of the Nation in 1924, found two working-class, small-town girls wearing 'well-cut skirts, silk stockings, such shoes as can be bought nowhere in Europe [at the price], quiet blouses, bobbed hair, charming straw hats, and easily cynical expressions terrifying to the awkward man.177 The mass radio audience (followed by the talkies) brought about the Americanization of immigrant communities and a new classlessness in dress, speech, and attitudes.4 billion. Expenditure on radios rose from a mere $10,648,000 in 1920 to $411,637,000 in 1929, and total electrical product sales tripled in the decade to $2. Next to automobiles, it was the new electric industry which fueled and reflected the boom.
  In fact, Twenties prosperity was a growing solvent of class and other barriers.176 What the American Twenties demonstrated was the speed with which industrial productivity could transform luxuries into necessities and spread them down the class pyramid. Air passengers rose from 49,713 in 1920 to 417,505 in 1930 (by 1940 the figure was 3,185,278 and it was nearly 8 million by 1945). Meanwhile the middle class was moving into air travel.175 The meaning of these figures is that the American working class had acquired the freedom of movement limited hitherto to a section of its middle class, and denied to European workers for another thirty years or more. Even by the end of the decade European registrations were only 20 percent of the US level and production a mere 13 percent. In 1924 the four leading European car producers turned out only 11 percent of the cars manufactured in America. This gives some idea of America's global dominance. Production rose to 5,621,715 in 1929, by which time cars registered in the US totaled 26,501,443, five-sixths of the world's production and one car for every five people in the country. At the beginning of 1914, 1,258,062 cars were registered in the US, which produced 569,054 during the year.174
  The heart of the consumer boom was in personal transport, which in a vast country, where some of the new cities were already 30 miles across, was not a luxury.2 billion in eight years, with real per-capita income rising from $522 to $716: not Babylonian luxury but a modest comfort never hitherto thought possible.4 to $87. That involved an increase in national income from $59. On a 1933-8 index of 100, it was 58 in 1921 and passed 110 in 1929.173 But growth was spectacular. In the farming community it was patchy, and it largely eluded certain older industrial communities, such as the New England textile trade. It was not universal. The prosperity was very widespread. That is not true. Another myth that has grown up about these times is that the Twenties Boom was a mere drunken spending-spree, bound to end in disaster, and that beneath a veneer of prosperity was an abyss of poverty.Thus Coolidge departed, pulling down the curtain on the last genuine capitalist Arcadia