took the exam on US, did pretty well

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+20s is a period of high cultural change between modernists and
+traditionalists
+
+What were its cultural themes?
+How did Republicans shape the national political culture?
+What sociocultural changes lead to the rise of the "New Woman" and the
+"Sexual Revolution"
+How did the consumer culture create an unhealthy economy?
+
+F Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby/This Side of Paradise
+- Worked feverishly because he desperately wanted to be a writer but his
+  parents, girlfriend believed he had no prospects in it.
+- Almost autobiographical about love and greed
+    - Flapper = more independent young woman
+    - About post-war youths' carpe diem, gratification, mortality
+1920s were modern: they developed consumerist (credit-based) attitudes.
+    - Advertising
+        - Personal pleasure were encouraged
+    - Disillusioned
+Woodrow Wilson not reelected because sweeping reforms were disbelieved.
+
+Republican leadership panders to the everyman focused inward. (1920)
+    - "Likable mediocrity": Warren G Harding
+    - Limited abilities, anti-Woodrow Wilson, anti-internationalist.
+        "America First"
+    - But he's from a key state and "looks presidential."
+    - Terrible speechwriter; "first president to hire a full-time
+      speechwriter"
+    - Farmers, liberal intellectuals, religious fundamentals believed
+      they were discriminated by the war.
+    - Readily defeats Democrat alternative (16M to 9M) James Cox.
+    - Ignorant "plain fellow"
+        - Alcohol, hosted poker games, tobacco, adulterer
+        - Incredibly insecure about his inabilities despite his outward
+          appearance
+            "Should never have been here [in the Oval Office]"
+    - Andrew Mellon, 3rd richest man, develops Mellon Plan
+        Proposes huge tax rate reductions believing they forced the
+        wealthy to keep their money tied up. (top bracket at 73%)
+        - Unemployment falls
+        - Taxes dive
+    - Mired in scandal: Director of Veterans Bureau stole medical
+      hospital supplies. Other director let prohibition be flouted.
+    - Teapot Dome Scandal
+        - Albert Fall was deeply indebted, 8 years overdue on taxes
+        - Began selling oil to close friends (petroleum exec)
+        - Took $4M in bribes from an oil tycoon
+        - First official to serve time for his position.
+    - Warren G Harding dies of food poisoning.
+    - Succeeded by VP Calvin Coolidge
+
+Coolidge Administration
+- Puritanical morals, focused on minimal regulation & capitalism.
+- Greatest accomplishment was "minding my own business."
+- 12 hours of sleep AND a nap.
+- Limited regulation of business and industry
+- Reelected in 1924
+- Surging economy taken as endorsement of deregulation
+
+
+Henry Ford and the Age of the Automobile
+- "Machine age" = modernity
+- Exponential growth up to 8 million cars in America
+    - Henry Ford in 1903 built cars for the masses (democratization)
+        - Model-T only $4K in modern dollars
+        - Margins low, wages high
+        - 1920: America 2/3 of oil production
+        - 1930: 10% of Americans work with cars
+        - Assembly line made production very efficient
+- Freed the American people: urban and rural areas became less disparate
+
+Sigmund Freud and the Sexual Revolution
+- "Frank treatment of sex," especially at colleges
+- Sigmund Freud wanted to legitimize psychological field
+    - Reckless, unethical scientist: manipulated data, false assertions
+    - Manipulated information to provide narrative about ego, super-ego,
+      id, repression, and sexuality.
+    - Anti-religious. Wanted psychological analysis to take its role
+    - Cocaine-addicted.
+    - Writes "Interpretations of Dreams" that calls subconscious a
+      roiling snakepit of repressed desires and urges.
+    - "True Confessions" magazine focuses on Freud-inspired narratives.
+        - Sensual freedom and feisty independence of women.
+    - Talk Therapy popularized to help young people realize their hidden
+      selves.
+    - Freud pushed narratives supporting sex
+        - Simplified versions claimed that all sexual activity was good
+
+Birth Control
+- Christians viewed it as an affront to God's will
+- Margaret Sanger, nurse and midwife, saw birth control as a solution to
+  large families' poverty, amateur abortions, etc.
+    - Socialist party member
+    - Promotes birth control instead of women's suffrage
+    - *The Woman Rebel* promotes contraception, women's rights, suffrage
+    - Arrested but released
+    - Opens world's first birth control clinic, shut down by police.
+    - Endorses sterilization for the mentally incompetent and people
+      with hereditary conditions
+    - 1937, SC allows physicians to distribute contraception
+    - Dies in 1966 at 87
+The New Woman
+- Margaret Sanger is a symbol of the flapper
+- Zelda, F Scott's girlfriend, is a flapper that Scott calls her
+  irresponsible and reckless
+    - Drank, does "crazy things"
+- Women discouraged from attending coed colleges by doctors purporting
+  it would reduce blood to their ovaries
+    - Women returned somewhat to their old roles as homemakers
+
+- Household machines and supermarkets' year-round access to meats and
+  vegetables meant that advertisers targeted women for consumerism.
+    - Domestic woman was "born to shop"
+    - Belief that "buying products would make you feel good"
+- Encouraged by advertisers to keep buying to keep factories going
+    - Postwar relaxation, frugality during war replaced by wastefulness
+    - "Buy now, pay later": credit, installment plans invented.
+
+*The Theory of the Leisure Class* (1898) by Thorstein Veblen
+    - Conspicuous Consumption
+    - Americans wanted to get rich, and do it with little effort
+    - Success and status measured in terms of material wealth
+    - Brings up consumer debt. 75% of new car purchases on installments.
+
+Less savings and more spending was damaging during the Great Depression.