Zeitz, Joshua (Joshua M. Zeitz, Joshua Michael Zeitz)

PERSONAL:

Education: Swarthmore College, B.A.; Brown University, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY; Cambridge, England. Office—Pembroke College, Cambridge University, Cambridge CB2 1RF, England. E-mail—jmz23@cam.ac.uk.

CAREER:

Cambridge University, Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, lecturer on American history.

WRITINGS:

Flapper: The Notorious life and Scandalous Times of the First Thoroughly Modern Woman, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 2006.

White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including New Republic, Mother Jones, Dissent, American Heritage, Washington Post, New York Times, Forward, and the Los Angeles Times. Contributing editor, American Heritage.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian Joshua Zeitz's Flapper: The Notorious life and Scandalous Times of the First Thoroughly Modern Woman is a study of the stereotypical American flapper, a post-World War I young woman who was immersed in an indulgent lifestyle that including dancing the Charleston, drinking, smoking, and clubbing. Flappers wore short skirts, cut their hair, and set other fashion trends. Zeitz profiles famous flappers, including Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, actresses Clara Bow, the "It" girl, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks. Zeitz also gives space to cartoonist John Held, fashion artist Gordon Conway, New York writer Lois Long, and designer Coco Chanel, as well as others who promoted the image of the flapper by aligning themselves with Zelda and F. Scott, the writer who brought the flapper to the page in This Side of Paradise.

In reviewing Flapper in the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the book "sometimes moves too fast to make lucid connections, leaping in only a few pages from the Leopold-Loeb and Fatty Arbuckle trials (by way of illustrating the nation's growing obsession with celebrity) to Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman's opinions on population control…. But it's in this very overload of stories that Flapper finds its liveliest moments, and Mr. Zeitz truly captures the chaotic spirit of the age." A Publishers Weekly contributor described the book as being "an entertaining, well-researched and charmingly illustrated dissection of the 1920s flapper."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 15, 2006, Kristine Huntley, review of Flapper: The Notorious life and Scandalous Times of the First Thoroughly Modern Woman, p. 40.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2006, review of Flapper, p. 36.

Library Journal, February 15, 2006, Diane Fulkerson, review of Flapper, p. 134.

New York Times, March 24, 2006, Janet Maslin, review of Flapper.

Publishers Weekly, December 12, 2005, review of Flapper, p. 46.

ONLINE

University of Cambridge Web site,http://www.cam.ac.uk/ (November 21, 2006), biography.