A Thread of Years

481 pp. "Distinguished historian John Lukacs here presents a series of fictionalized vignettes of daily life as experienced by individuals in the United States during ordinary and extraordinary times between 1901 to 1969. Together these vignettes become a delightful - and poignant - history of manners and mores that shows the decline of civility and of the ideal of the gentleman. Lukacs couples each episode with a discussion of why he has chosen these details to relate, thereby also providing insight into historiographical thinking."