New Definitions.

In the 1910s long-term shifts in some of the basic patterns of everyday life in America not only continued but in many cases intensified, ushering in a time of numerous changes in personal behavior and social relations. Dramatic transformations in the ethnic makeup of the country, in race relations, in gender relations, and in the relationship between local and national authorities all raised sharp questions about the forces that governed the increasing complexity of American life. During this ferment some people tried to reestablish the traditional social bonds that had seemed to prevail in past decades; others asserted the need to control individual behavior through new laws; still others mourned the loss of supposedly simpler times. In 1917 America's entry into World War I shook American society in many ways and fostered the unintended effect of a volatility and fluidity in social relations, pitching...