Isolationism and Prohibition

Before World War II (1939–1945), the United States had a tendency towards isolationism; Woodrow Wilson won reelection in 1916 running on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.” However, the next year the United States entered World War I, after German submarines sank the Lusitania, killing nearly twelve hundred people, among whom were over one hundred children and one hundred and twenty Americans.

By the time “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” was published, the war had been over for almost four years, and the United States had retreated even further into isolationism. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 became the first legislation to restrict immigration into the country, greatly reducing the number of immigrants allowed into the United States each year (immigration was even further restricted by the Immigration Act of 1924).

In addition to this retreat from the world community...