Frederick Lewis Allen

Frederick Lewis Allen built his career as an American historian and magazine editor who made recent history readable without stripping away its social detail. After editorial work at The Atlantic Monthly and The Century, he joined Harper's Magazine in 1923 and eventually became editor in chief. Since Yesterday surveys the United States during the 1930s, following the economic crash, the New Deal, changing entertainment, public figures, and ordinary habits across a difficult decade. Harper issued the work around 1940 as a companion to Allen's earlier popular history Only Yesterday, which had examined the 1920s. His method combined journalism, cultural observation, and chronological narrative, allowing politics and economics to sit beside radio, film, music, fashion, and household experience. Since Yesterday remains closely tied to Allen's larger project of interpreting American life through recognizable events and shared routines. The book reflects the editor's gift for arranging a crowded period into a coherent public history.