Capital of the World: A Portrait Of New York City In The Roaring Twenties - Softcover

"The 1920s' distinctive cultural creation, the celebrity, is the real star of this gallery of famous New Yorkers. . . . Take Fanny Brice, then a popular comedienne. She was the inspiration for the hit musical and 1968 movie Funny Girl. . . . Others are novelist Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), mobster Lucky Luciano (The Godfather), and a Harlem nightclub (The Cotton Club). . . . Also including figures from journalism, prostitution, politics, music, and dance, Wallace's tome recalls the fizz and biz of 1920s publicity."-Booklist "...a great summer read." -BoweryBoys.com "...compelling and appealing.... [an] engaging recounting of the era as personified by some of its most colorful characters." -Sam Roberts, The New York Times "David Wallace anoints 1920s New York the Capital of the World." -Vanity Fair

In the same absorbing style that characterized his bestseller Lost Hollywood, David Wallace presents a the Prohibition-era personalities and events that made New York City the cultural and financial capital of the world. Sex, sin, song, work, sports, play-all these aspects of New York and more are told through a rich array of anecdotes and "inside" profiles of the individuals that personified them in a defining decade. As no book has to date, Capital of the World brings alive New York during a period that saw speakeasies, the rise of the Mafia, women achieving the right to vote, the birth of radio and mass communication, and the beginnings of gossip as a business. This was also an era abuzz with the arts, film, fashion, jazz, baseball, and boxing. Among the many personality driven themes so richly addressed in Capital of the World: * Sherman Billingsely's Stork Club and Prohibition * Martha Graham and modern dance * Babe Ruth and sports * David Sarnoff and radio * Alexander Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, and the rest of The Round Table * Lucky Luciano and organized crime * Mayor Jimmy "Gentleman Jim" Walker and politics * Madam Polly Adler and the brothels * Walter Winchell and the birth of gossip journalism * The Cotton Club and the Harlem Renaissance * And much more...