The outline of the period

The Waste Land.Few eras in American history present such vivid contrasts compressed into so short a time.An age of reform seemed to have given way to an era of reaction.Economically, the nation experienced equally profound shifts.Culturally, there seemed to be equally sharp contrasts.In the 1930s, by contrast, the nation's outlook appeared to shift dramatically.Americans in the 1920s experienced a series of profound changes in the way they lived and thought.As a result, they adopted a role sharply different from that of most intellectuals of earlier eras.Modern life, they argued, was cold, impersonal, materialistic, and thus meaningless.The sensitive individual could find no happiness in the mainstream of American society.