English 201A: English Composition (Farrell): eVideos

This overview of the biography and writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald from the Famous Authors series traces Fitzgerald’s life and influences—from his birth in St. Paul, Minnesota, to his university days at Princeton, literary celebrity, and frivolity in New York; to his status as social purveyor of modernists in Paris; to his tumultuous marriage to the talented but troubled Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and following alcoholic spiral. (33 minutes)

Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He coined the term "Jazz Age." Listen to an excerpt from "The Great Gatsby."

During this episode of New York: A Documentary Film, filmmaker Ric Burns explores how the post-World War I economic boom, the rise of consumer culture, and the birth of new mass media industries fueled the convergence of an incredible array of human and cultural energies, ending with the stock market crash of 1929 and the construction of the Empire State Building. In just over a decade, New York gave birth to its signature skyscrapers and to artistic creations like F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, George Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue,” and to the jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

The wild and crazy ’20s... the Jazz Age... the dangerous decade that laid the groundwork for many of the debacles of the remainder of the century. The end of World War I marked the end of the sufferings of war, and of the standards and expectations of the 19th century: hems came up, morality was redefined, and the search was on for the new.

A part of the series America in the 20th Century. Best known for its flappers, gangsters, and jazz, the Roaring Twenties was also an era of social tensions and political change.