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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIn the twelve months of 1919, the United States was hit by one crisis after another, and Martin W. Sandler's book shows how they all tangled together. A giant molasses tank exploded in Boston's North End, killing twenty-one people and burying entire city blocks in sticky brown waves. Women finally pushed the Nineteenth Amendment through Congress after more than seventy years of protest. Race riots erupted in cities from Washington, DC, to Chicago in what became known as the Red Summer. Thousands of workers walked off the job in the largest wave of labor strikes in American history, the country began the grand and ultimately doomed experiment of banning alcohol, and a fear of Communist takeover, the Red Scare, drove the government to raid homes and deport hundreds of people. Any one of those events would have made 1919 a memorable year; together they mark it as a turning point in American history.
Free Battle of the Books questions for 1919: The Year That Changed America
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about 1919: The Year That Changed America. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a company paint a leaking tank brown so neighbors won't notice the drips?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
The molasses tank leaked so badly that neighborhood children gathered the syrup in cans and buckets. Instead of fixing it, the company simply painted the tank brown to hide the leaks.
- First half
In what book does an attorney in a white cape lead a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on a white horse?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
Attorney Inez Milholland Boissevain wore a white cape and rode a white horse at the front of the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, followed by bands, floats, and thousands of marchers.
- First half
In what book do hundreds of thousands of black families leave the South in the Great Migration?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
With factories short of workers during the war, more than half a million black Americans moved north and to the Midwest to cities like Chicago and Detroit. This movement became known as the Great Migration.
- Second half
In what book does a young lawyer build a filing system of cross-indexed cards on suspected enemies?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
Fresh out of law school, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division to hunt Communists and assembled a vast card file of over two hundred thousand cards on tens of thousands of individuals and organizations.
- Second half
In what book do thirty-five thousand shipyard workers walk off the job, sparking a citywide general strike?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
The Seattle General Strike began when shipyard workers walked off the job. Soon sixty-five thousand workers from scores of occupations joined them in the nation's first general strike.
- Near the end
In what book are babies perched atop hidden liquor inside smugglers' baby carriages?
✓ Answer
1919: The Year That Changed America by Martin W. Sandler
To get illegal liquor into homes during Prohibition, men and women smuggled it in baby carriages with real babies sitting above the hidden bottles, along with false floorboards and hot water bottles.
