One Summer: America, 1927 (71 page)

The instrument of Ruth’s greatness was his heavy bat, of fify-four ounces, which he used to clobber more homers than any baseball player—any team—had ever hit before, changing the very nature of America’s favorite sport
. (
photo credit 14
)

The summer of 1927 saw some epic disasters. The worst of them was the great Mississippi flood. After weeks of torrential rains, five hundred miles of the river flooded from Illinois to New Orleans, putting an area the size of Scotland under water
. (
photo credit 15
)

The taciturn president Calvin Coolidge appointed Herbert Hoover (left), whom he referred to derisively as Wonder Boy, to manage the relief efforts for the human calamity of the flood—a task he performed ably and with a notable absence of warmth
. (
photo credit 16
)

On May 18 in Bath, Michigan, the maniac Andrew Kehoe, protesting high taxes on his farm, killed his wife and blew up the local elementary school with five hundred pounds of dynamite. In all, forty-four people (including Kehoe) died that day, thirty-seven children and seven adults—still the largest and most cold-blooded slaughter of children in our history
. (
photo credit 17
)

Nan Britton, the mistress of Warren G. Harding, and the child she had by him in 1919, Elizabeth Ann. Her sizzlingly tell-all memoir of their affair, including multiple trysts in the confined space of a White House closet, created a sensation and further depressed the deceased Harding’s already low reputation
. (
photo credit 18
)

Beginning in 1927, Calvin Coolidge fled his none-too-taxing job as president of the United States (four hours a day, tops) for a three-month extended vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Here he is with his wife in his full cowboy regalia, a getup he wore that summer on every possible occasion
. (
photo credit 19
)

Hjalmar Schacht, head of the German Reichsbank; Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Sir Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England; Charles Rist, deputy governor of the Banque de France. At a secret meeting on a Long Island estate in June of 1927, these four lords of finance made a fateful decision to lower interest rates that further inflated the stock market bubble and led indirectly to the disastrous crash of 1929
. (
photo credit 20
)

Wayne B. Wheeler, fanatical head of the Anti-Saloon League and the single most driving force behind the insane social experiment that was Prohibition. In order to prevent industrial alcohol to be used as a beverage, Wheelerites insisted that it be “denatured” and thus rendered poisonous. Those who drank it and died simply got what they deserved
. (
photo credit 21
) (
photo credit 22
)

Dwight Morrow, a J. P. Morgan banker, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, pioneer in the development of the American aviation industry, and eventual father-in-law of Charles Lindbergh
. (
photo credit 23
)

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth posing for a photo during an exhibition game in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The two home run rivals on the Yankees were unlikely friends despite vast differences in temperament and habits. For a while in the summer of 1927, it seemed as if Gehrig would emerge the home run champion
. (
photo credit 24
)

The sculptor Gutzon Borglum views a model for his presidential sculptures on Mount Rushmore—a monumental and seemingly harebrained project dedicated in the summer of 1927 and only completed fourteen years later
. (
photo credit 25
)