Author Description

Bootleggers, Al Capone, bathtub gin, speakeasies, the Klan, mah-jongg, the Lindy, flagpole sitting, rumble seats, silent movies, and flappers. A fictive frolic through the Roaring Twenties as seen through the eyes of a young undercover reporter mentored by the era's key intellectual, H.L. Mencken, who unleashes his cynicism in all its vitriol. Clarence Darrow, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, George Gershwin, Aimee Semple McPherson, Fats Waller, and F. Scott Fitzgerald do their part in the story as the Jazz Age reaches its crushing climax. Jitterbuggin' with the Renaissance: A Jazz Age Epic "...is a triumph on every level. Don Swaim leads us through some of the most vivid events of the 1920s-from Al Capone's stranglehold on Chicago to murders in Hollywood to the stock market crash-in a narrative that is as vibrant and rollicking as the decade he is portraying. And throughout, we are regaled by H. L. Mencken's nose-thumbing of politics, religion, and American culture in general. If you can only read one novel about the Roaring Twenties, this should be it." -S. T. Joshi, leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and H. L. Mencken, and winner of the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, British Fantasy awards