Summary of Bill Bryson's One Summer

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

#1 On 20 March 1927, a family in Queens Village, New York, was murdered. The New York Times reported on the case, which became known as the Sash Weight Murder Case. The two villains left a clue in the form of an Italian-language newspaper on a table downstairs.

#2 The 1920s was a great time for reading in America. Each year, American publishers produced 110 million books, more than ten thousand separate titles. For those who felt daunted by such a welter of literary possibility, a new phenomenon called the book club had just debuted.

#3 The 1920s was a golden age for newspapers. News circulation in the decade rose by about a fifth, to 36 million copies a day.

#4 The success of Hearst’s newspaper, the Daily Mirror, and Macfadden’s magazine, the Evening Graphic, led to imitators. The Graphic was the creation of an eccentric bushy-haired businessman named Bernarr Macfadden, who was strongly devoted to body-building and the rights of commuters to a decent railroad service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669387060

IRB Media

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Insights on Bill Bryson's One Summer

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On 20 March 1927, a family in Queens Village, New York, was murdered. The New York Times reported on the case, which became known as the Sash Weight Murder Case. The two villains left a clue in the form of an Italian-language newspaper on a table downstairs.

#2

The 1920s was a great time for reading in America. Each year, American publishers produced 110 million books, more than ten thousand separate titles. For those who felt daunted by such a welter of literary possibility, a new phenomenon called the book club had just debuted.

#3

The 1920s was a golden age for newspapers. News circulation in the decade rose by about a fifth, to 36 million copies a day.

#4

The success of Hearst’s newspaper, the Daily Mirror, and Macfadden’s magazine, the Evening Graphic, led to imitators. The Graphic was the creation of an eccentric bushy-haired businessman named Bernarr Macfadden, who was strongly devoted to body-building and the rights of commuters to a decent railroad service.

#5

The Snyder–Gray case received more column inches of coverage than any other crime of the era. It was not the most appealing case, but it was a sensational one that sold newspapers.

#6

The trial of Judd Gray and Ruth Snyder was held in 1920s America. It was a tragic tale of a lonely art editor who developed an infatuation with a high-spirited office secretary named Ruth Brown. They were wed four months after they met, but their loveless marriage lasted only two days.

#7

Ruth began going out alone. In 1925, she met Judd Gray, a traveling salesman for the Bien Jolie Corset Company, and they began a relationship. She began plotting her husband’s murder with him.

#8

The trial received a lot of coverage, and readers learned that the judge, Townsend Scudder, returned home to his Long Island estate each evening to be greeted by his 125 pet dogs.

#9

The Ruth Snyder murder attracted a lot of attention because it was seen as a classic example of an ambitious woman who commanded the submissive male. The papers tried to portray her as an evil temptress.

#10

The Snyder case was a very simple one, and was never going to be a thrilling courtroom drama. Yet it became known as the crime of the century and had a profound impact on popular culture.

#11

Charles Lindbergh was twenty-five years old, but looked eighteen. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed 128 pounds. He had never been on a date, and had never smoked or drank. He had made four emergency parachute jumps and had crash-landed a fifth plane in a Minnesota bog, but had escaped unhurt.

#12

The family name was Lindbergh. Charles Lindbergh’s grandfather, a dour Swede with a luxuriant beard and fire-and-brimstone countenance, changed it to Lindbergh when he came to America in 1859 in circumstances that were both abrupt and dubious.

#13

By the mid-1920s, America had no system of licensing and no requirements for training. Anyone could buy a plane, in any condition, and take up paying passengers. The country was so slack about flying that it didn’t even keep track of the number of aeroplane crashes and fatalities.

#14

Until 1925, America had no aeronautical shortcomings. The Air Commerce Act was signed