Steppin' Out

Book excerpt: The evolution of New York nightlife from the Gay Nineties through the Jazz Age was, as Lewis A. Erenberg shows, both symbol and catalyst of America's transition out of the Victorian period. Cabaret culture led the way to new styles of behavior and consumption, dissolving conventional barriers between classes, races, the sexes-even between life and art. A fabulous era of chorus girls, jazz players, lobster palaces, and hip flasks-the age of Sophie Tucker, Irene and Vernon Castle, and Gilda Gray-tangos through the pages of this ground-breaking, as well as entertaining, cultural history.