NONFICTION - Sept. 20, 1992

THE UNCERTAINTY OF EVERYDAY LIFE, 1915-1945 by Harvey Green (HarperCollins: $28; 262 pp.). Harvey Green, a professor of history at Northeastern University, brought two important things to this book: an overarching theme and an enormous collection of facts. The problem with “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life” is that these two things rarely meet, at least explicitly; Green seems to believe that his facts speak for themselves, for only rarely does he link them to his minimalist, unsurprising argument--that the years between the world wars, inclusive, were a time of great change and uncertainty in daily life. The historical territory Green covers is often tiresomely familiar--the Depression, the Dust Bowl, strife between government and labor, the effects of radio--but he does bring together some interesting facts: for example, a “new uncrowded industry” for the 1930s, according to one magazine advertisement, was the canning of giant frogs. Upon finishing this book, the reader is likely to believe that the years 1915 to 1945 were dominated by choice and change more than uncertainty, which seems more a product of the nuclear age.