David Kyvig Daily Life In The United States Summary

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Daily Life in the United States is a profound book that in which reveals what the ordinary American may have experienced in the 1920s through the 1940s. This book is a must read for those eager to learn about what people went through during this monumental time period in American history. Through exhaustive research, the author is able to provide the reader with an understanding of how life was different back in that time, and how individuals conquered situations differently from each other.
David E. Kyvig’s thesis is to examine what the day-to-day life experience was for the ordinary American in 1920s and 1930s. In the preface of the book, he addresses several interesting questions which he expands further on later in the book. The questions he proposes are as follows: “How should the impact of new technology be …show more content…

Each page is packed top to bottom with information. Historical books are very hard for most people to stay engaged in because the topics may drag on exhaustively or become a bore. Kyvig brings to the surface a very excellent point. History is not always about the big spectacular occurrences. History does not have to be a bright painting full of exciting color. Realistically, the day-to-day routine of a people, of a country, may be rather quite dry and uninteresting, but still very important nonetheless. The simple things in life often get easily overlooked. Kyvig took on a rather humdrum topic, but did his best work in displaying the story of the daily lives of American people as unique and valuable in it’s own way. An example of information that could be seen as quite dry is when Kyvig goes into detail about the American population in the 1920s. (11)The information of numbers and percentages spread over two pages. This certain type of information is hard to keep the reader engaged in, such as the in-depth genealogies in the