Vigorous, lucid and full of memorable portraits and unexpected insights. A fine introduction to an astonishing society in the making. - Jonathan Spence, Yale University It remains the most lucid account of the subject and will attract a new generation of readers who missed it on its first appearance. - Oscar Handlin, Harvard University The merits of Andrew Sinclair's book lie as much in his professional skill as a writer as in his knowledge as a historian. - Daily Telegraph

Andrew Sinclair has studied or taught at Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia Universities. He has been a publisher and a film director (his film of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, starring Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is also a classic) and has written many successful novels. He is the author of a number of historical works including Prohibition: The Era of Excess and The Better Half: The Emancipation of the American Woman as well as Dylan the Bard, a biography of Dylan Thomas, and biographies of Warren G. Harding, Jack London, J. P. Morgan and John Ford.