-Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the pinnacle writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined.

-He was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family.

- Fitzgerald studied at Princeton University to further his writer's education.

-1917 he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army. Afraid that he might die in World War I with his literary dreams unfulfilled, in the weeks before reporting for duty Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist.

-Fitzgerald was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry and assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. While at a country club, Fitzgerald met and fell in love with Zelda Sayre.

- Their daughter and only child, Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

- Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940.

-Fitzgerald's work has inspired writers ever since he was first published.

-He wrote 5 novels and a collection of short stories. His most popular works are "The Great Gatsby" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

-Like most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire, and sold his stories and novels to Hollywood studios.

Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write his stories in an authentic manner but then put in "twists that made them into saleable magazine stories.

-Prohibition was a period of nearly fourteen years of U.S. history in which the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor was made illegal.

-It led to the first and only time an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was repealed.

-It was a time characterized by speakeasies, glamor, and gangsters and a period of time in which even the average citizen broke the law.

-A new breed of gangster arose during this period. These people took notice of the amazingly high level of demand for alcohol within society and the extremely limited avenues of supply to the average citizen. Within this imbalance of supply and demand, gangsters saw profit.

-These gangsters would hire men to smuggle in rum from the Caribbean (rumrunners) or hijack whiskey from Canada and bring it into the U.S.

-Others would buy large quantities of liquor made in homemade stills.

-The gangsters would open up secret bars (speakeasies) for people to come in, drink, and socialize.

-On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment (Prohibition) to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

-The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, making alcohol once again legal. This was the first and only time in U.S. history that an Amendment has been repealed.

-The American Dream a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.

-"life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement regardless of social class or circumstances of birth."
James Truslow Adams

-The idea for the American Dream comes from the Declaration of Independence which stated that "all men are created equal".

-Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream.

-Arnold Rothstein, (born January 17, 1882 – November 6, 1928) nicknamed "the Brain," was a Jewish-American racketeer, businessman and gambler who became a kingpin of the Jewish mob in New York.

-He is known to have organized corruption in professional athletics, and also conspiring in the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

-Rothstein's agents allegedly paid members of the Chicago White Sox to "throw," or deliberately lose, the World Series. He bet against them and made a significant profit in what was called the "Black Sox Scandal."

-Rothstein transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation.

-Rothstein was the person who first realized that Prohibition was a business opportunity, a means to enormous wealth, who understood the truths of early century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, greed) and came to dominate them.

-On November 4, 1928, Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded during a business meeting at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel at Seventh Avenue near 55th Street. He died the next day at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan.

-His death was the result major gambling debt. Rothstein owed over $320,000 from a fixed poker game.

-Flappers were a "new breed" of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.

-Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

-The slang word flapper, describing a young woman, is sometimes supposed to refer to a young bird flapping its wings while learning to fly.

-By 1908, newspapers as serious as The Times used it, although with careful explanation: "A 'flapper', we may explain, is a young lady who has not yet been promoted to long frocks and the wearing of her hair 'up'"