1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year

by Nick Rennison

1922 was a year of great turbulence and upheaval. The world had just emerged from a war that had killed millions of people and a global pandemic that had ended the lives of tens of millions more. Its events reverberated throughout the rest of the twentieth century and still affect us today, 100 years later.
Empires fell. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after more than six centuries. The British Empire had reached its greatest extent but its heyday was over. The Irish Free State was declared and demands for independence in India grew. New nations and new politics came into existence. The Soviet Union was officially created and Mussolini's Italy became the first Fascist state.
In the USA, Prohibition was at its height. The Hollywood film industry, although rocked by a series of scandals, continued to grow. A new mass medium - radio - was making its presence felt and, in Britain, the BBC was founded. In literature it was the year of peak modernism. Both T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses were first published in full.
In society, already changed by the trauma of war and pandemic, the morals of the past seemed increasingly outmoded; new ways of behaving were making their appearance. The Roaring Twenties had begun to roar and the Jazz Age had arrived.
1922 also saw the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi, the death of Marcel Proust, the election of a new pope, the first use of insulin to treat diabetes, the release of Nosferatu, the first major vampire movie, and the brief imprisonment in Munich of an obscure right-wing demagogue named Adolf Hitler.
In a sequence of vividly written sketches, Nick Rennison conjures up all the drama and diversity of an extraordinary year.

• ISBN13: 9780857304674
• Publish Date: 18 November 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Oldcastle Books Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• URL: https://oldcastlebooks.co.uk

Reviews

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Thank you NetGalley and OldCastle books for the chance to read and review this book!

 

1922 is a short but interesting read that really sums up what the year 1922 would have felt like to someone living through it! It's interesting how much racial violence came up in the book.

 

I don't think a reader will find everything included in this book interesting, that being said I would give it to anyone who likes history because Nick Rennison is a good writer.

 

Of course, I did feel like the book focused on some countries more than others.