Starting during the turbulent years of World War II, the author recounts his family’s nomadic travels during the buoyant post war years. After a short stay at the New Jersey shore, the next stop is Montreal, in often frigid Quebec, in a time where French-Canadians are challenging the British influences.
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This fourth book of the series, The 20th Century and I, is the love story of a recently graduated, immature, young man and his pursuit of both his true love and a successful career. Notably, his story is set in the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous decades in American history. In 1861, tensions that had existed since the founding of the United States between the north and south erupted in violent civil war. Four bloody years later the south capitulated in the military conflict. Faced with the choice of whether to bring the Confederate States of the south back into the Union as family, or to treat them as a conquered country. In many ways the United States chose the latter. While the shooting war had stopped, the underlying mistrust and tensions between the two regions continued.
One full century later the conflict resumed with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. By God’ss grace, this time there were no serious calls for secession, or armies dispatched to the field. However, as the book notes, emotions were almost as high, and there were numerous episodes of violence. This time, though, the end result was successful. De facto slavery was finally ended, and African Americans had entered the mainstream.
Upon graduation from the University of Virginia in 1965, Frank Briggs was hired by Equitable Life, and sent to its Southern Regional Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia as a Group Pension and Health Insurance Representative. Three years later, he transferred to field operations and became a successful agent, representative, and manager for the company.
You could call this book an Atlanta take on the AME critically acclaimed TV series “Mad Men”- except substitute life insurance for advertising. This is a candid reflection of a successful product of the Greek system at any major American university (and his long suffering, family) and a city maturing in a critical period of Atlanta history. Only Frank Briggs could respond to his exasperated bride, who said “How can you understand? I am not the shallow fickle person you married.” His rejoinder. “I married you because you were fickle and shallow. I like you that way.” Unlike Margaret Ann there will be no suffering, and you will enjoy this funny, insightful and at times ribald account of an Atlanta lost in time. This is a tale unfolding during the awakening of the new Atlanta and South that is well worth reading.
Rarely has a memoir captured such an important 10-year cycle as the 1965 to 1975 years as lived and savored by a then young Frank Briggs. Never having lived in the strange new world of the Deep South, and fresh from college, he has the inquisitive eyes to notice Atlanta’s differences, and dives in with vigor. With innate people skills, he seems to have been born with the ability to size people up. This gave him a jet-propelled start to his career, spent entirely in Atlanta. He openly shares his early-on challenge to moderate the social life he learned in college. Frank married early during these most critical years after a compressed, tumultuous courtship with his wife, Margaret Ann, a truth speaker, was the impetus to Frank seeing that he could be both an all-star in business and a family man. The sauce to the book is how the world of a civic-minded young white Frank and equally young black community leaders came together in Atlanta’s business world that was “too
busy to hate.” Andy Young was an acquaintance, and Maynard Jackson a friend. And there were others. highly recommend this book as both highly entertaining, and a meaningful glimpse into what was probably Atlanta, and the South’s greatest transitional 10 years.
What happens when a young transplant comes to the south in 1965 to start a new job only to find himself in the eye of the storm of political, racial, and social turbulence of the south and the Nation?
All he seeks is success, his love, a car, and normality in this era of rapid change. Read on…!
COPYRIGHT © 2026 Frank Hay Briggs Jr. All Rights Reserved.
