Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America

From the end of the World War I until the Great Depression, America saw an extraordinary flowering of culture, commerce, and invention focused particularly in Manhattan. Here, under the corrupt but vigorous rule of Mayor Jimmy Walker, New York hosted entertainment magnates such as Florenz Ziegfeld and Texas Guinan, media pioneers David Sarnoff and William Paley, sports heroes Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, Prohibition-era gangsters Arnold Rothstein and Frank Costello, and a boom in rail transportation and skyscraper construction. In a captivating series of biographical sketches, Miller documents the way in which Jazz Age Manhattan attracted a unique group of talented and ambitious individuals and became the social and economic epicenter of America in the space of about ten years. Despite the daunting length of the audiobook, narrator Jim Frangione does a fine job of maintaining its energetic pace.