"Anything goes" by Lucy Moore

I have to put Elvis Presley biography aside for a while, because it really started to wear me out - Guralnick might have researched his material for ten years but the book overflows with way too much details and contrary to universal praise, I still find it dry, even second time around. Instead, I had turned my attention to another biography, this time biography of a particular decade.

Titled after a famous Cole Porter song, "Anything goes" is a colorful, anecdotal and very entertaining walk trough a decade that changed the world - authoress focused exclusively on USA and interesting chapters that shaped public opinions back than: Al Capone, early Jazz, Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin, president Warren Harding, Henry Ford and booming car industry, Sacco & Vanzetti trial case, Ku Klux Klan, poet Harry Crosby and "lost generation" who lived in Paris, Dorothy Parker and her friends at "round table", Charles Lindbergh and his "Spirit of St. Louis", boxing champion Jack Dempsey and finally "Black Thursday" that signaled the end of what was a frivolous decade for many.

I don't believe for a second that 1920s were golden era when prohibited drinks overflowed and everybody danced naked in the fountains - this was perhaps a leisure for privileged handful of wealthy few and leaders of underworld, there must have been thousands of anonymous people who simply worked, lived and dreamed in silence, like always. All that audience who visited Charlie Chaplin movies in the dark cinema halls were far more numerous than examples from this book, however the subjects were extraordinary people who lived extraordinary lives (what? no Isadora Duncan?) and scandals that filled newspapers of the day. Ex-patriots who left boring old homeland and relocated in Europe where they enjoyed inheritance and indulged in life of luxury remind me of people who travel to India to "find themselves" - in both cases, driving force is a search for something else, outside of the box. There is a interesting feeling of mirroring our age of indiscretions and scandals with what is mentioned here, it might even been purposely. I find the book ve