For nearly half a century, the American 1920s were widelycharacterized as the era of "the lost generation." Experiences like Europeanexpatriation, habitual drunkenness, and repeated artistic failure (which werewholly unrepresentative of most early-twentieth-century American lives) werenevertheless frequently employed in both popular and academic venues as usefulsymbols for that pivotal era. In recent years, this misleading image of the period hasgenerally faded. It has been replaced by a more inclusive vision of the 1920'sas a decade that saw many Americans incorporate aspects of aesthetic modernism,ethnic diversity, and the new mass culture into their preexisting way of life.Nevertheless, "the lost generation" remains a fascinating instance ofhistorical mythology - a widely known and accepted account of American historythat had little if any basis in fact. Written with the general Americanist rather than thetheoretical specialist in mind, ModernLives traces the development of the idea of "the lost generation"and reinterprets it in light of more recent versions of the American 1920s.Employing a wide range of historical, literary, and cultural theory, Marc Dolanfocuses on American versions of "the lost generation," particularlyas they emerged in the autobiographical writings of the generation's supposed"members." By examining the narrative and discursive forms thatErnest Hemingway, Malcolm Cowley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others imposed onthe raw data of their lives, Dolan draws out the subtle relationships betweenpersonal and historical narratives of the early twentieth century, as well asthe ways in which the mediating notion of a distinct "generation"allowed those authors to pass back and forth between "the personal"and "the historical."