Product Description
A perennial backlist performer.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

A bit left bias is an understatement
What do you expect from an academiac? A left-wing off-the-chart socialist.

The National Endowment for the Humanities gave him a ton of money to spew their socialist agenda. So much for higher education. Par for the course.

Could hardly be worse
Just awful.So bad that I felt compelled to write this (my first ever Amazon review).

This book reads like a transcript of a sophomoric lecture about the Great Depression.One star because there is no option for zero.

Interesting and scary at the same time
I am still only about half way through the book. It definitely is not a quick read. But I also can't put it down and consider not finishing it. I still need to find out - as Paul Harvey would say - the 'rest of the story'.

What is so striking and frightening to me is that, although the book was written many years ago, - you could easily believe the author was referring to our current economic mess and this deep recession that has gripped not only our country, but the world.The more I read in the book, the more it feels as if we are revisiting the past.

So many of the things that happened back then are still continuing today. Greed, dishonesty, rampant speculation, market manipulation - that hasn't gone away. We certainly have not learned from our mistakes, and the incredible gap between the haves and the have nots is just as bad as it was in those days.

I am very glad I purchased the book - scary as it is. The author's discussion of the politics of the time seems eerily similar to the partisan politics we see today.

Ronald Reagan Pop Up Book
Generally, this was a very fair, well written history of the Great Depression.While the author treats both Hoover and FDR in an even, balanced manner, the same cannot be said of Ronald Reagan.Perhaps, as some other reviewers have noted, McElvaine was attempting to put the era into some historical context, but too often it comes across that the author just can't stand the 40th President.Too bad, since throughout the book Reagan pops up without warning and usually without warrant.This sort of intrusion does little to recommend the author.

So-so
Although the individual interviews and stories were interesting, the choice of stories and the order of the presentation is a bit perplexing.The project seems to lack cohesion. ... Read more

Product Description
'Things ain't now like they used to be nohow,' a Virginia native told a WPA worker in the 1930s. Indeed, a central theme unifying the hundreds of life histories recorded by Virginia Writers' Project fieldworkers between 1938 and 1941 is that the narrators all bear witness to the vast socioeconomic and cultural changes brought about by the Great Depression and the New Deal's responses to it. These never-published VWP narrative interviews, however, have remained largely unknown and unavailable to readers until now.

Talk about Trouble presents 61 Writers' Project life histories that depict Virginia men and women, both blacks and whites, and offer a cross-section of ages, occupations, experiences, and cultural and class backgrounds. Headnotes set the context for each life history and introduce people and themes that link individual events and experiences. One hundred sixty photographs, most taken in the state by Farm Security Administration or Virginia WPA photographers, add graphic texture and backdrop to the stories and lives recounted. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Social History and Folklife Studies of Virginia
During the 1930s, writers and photographers who needed employment documented local history and culture for guides to their states.Some of these WPA guides remain fascinating reading even today.A great deal of the material, however, was never published.This book comes out of the WPA materials that were collected for the state of Virginia.The book consists of photographs and excerpts from interviews along with introductory comments by the editors.There are various themes that are presented, and the editors develop commentary to interpret what they present.The photography is first rate, and there are a lot of interesting stories in this book that are well worth reading.The book also has an archival quality which will make it a valuable resource for historians as well as for folklorists completing contemporary studies of Virginia folklife. ... Read more

Product Description
During the 1930's the United States felt the shattering impact of the Great Depression. With mounting shock, the American people watched their once proud industrial economy sputter and stall. By 1933 national income had declined to less than half its 1929 level, joblessness had mounted until nearly one out of every three workers was totally unemployed, and millions more were on part time. In the world's richest country, hunger, want, and despair were distressingly commonplace. Some Americans, thoroughly disillusioned by the collapse, came to question traditional ways and values. Others, sometimes gropingly, sometimes with heady confidence, turned to reshaping American institutions to meet the challenge of the Depression. In a burst of reform activity between 1933 and 1938, the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed many areas of American life. One of the most significant and controversial areas of change was in the field of labor-management relations. The New Deal put an official stamp of approval on collective bargaining between workers and their employers...and the materials presented here are designed to illustrate the development of this collective bargaining policy under the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930's. [From the Introduction] ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (286)

disappointing treatment of a fascinating subject
I was quite excited to get my hands on this book. To me, the history of American in the 1930s, and in particular the Dust Bowl and Depression, is a fascinating period the hardships of which shaped the ideals of one of our greatest generations of men and women. I had hoped to get an intimate look at what it meant to be in the Depression and Dust Bowl for those who stayed behind instead of fleeing for the thinly gilded promised land of California. But I found this book to read as if written by an amateur writer who was blatantly overwhelmed by his subject. I don't think the writer ever quite figured out what story he wanted to tell, and he ends up telling different tales in a halting, sometimes over-detailed manner that never quite seems to do justice to the real story of that time period. The book often seemed to degenerate into a listing of factoids (this happened, then this, then this person did this...)
This isn't true of the whole book of course, and towards the end the story seems to flow a little bit more (as often happens when somebody is trying to do something he's not quite up to, once the end is in sight things get a little bit better). But overall I was disappointed. It was more like reading a list than reading a story.

the worst hard time
Dramatic review of a trying time in US history but very repetitive in the telling of similar trials experienced by the book's characters.

A bit of a slow start, but well worth the read
Though it is nonfiction, this book contains all the qualities I look for in a historical novel - vivid imagery, fast-moving plot, engaging characters. It chronicles the fallout of one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in history - the Dust Bowl. Using his journalistic skills, Egan transforms research, data and interviews into a page-turning tale of devastation, tenacity, endurance, redemption and optimism. Story telling at its best.

Reads like a novel
One of the best books I have ever read.This is a can't-put-it-down non-fiction book that is so gripping and emotionally charged that it reads like a novel.The suffering and endurance of the plains settlers who lived through and endured the Dust Bowl was Biblical. The "wheat boom" and then bust which led directly to the Dust Bowl has warnings for us today.If you grew up hearing stories about the Dust Bowl this book will complete your education.Highly recommend.

What government can cause
This is very well-written book.Can hardly put it down.Gives the history and govenment involvement in the causes of the dust bowl.Can relate to what the government is doing today.There is always more to and event than we realize and anyone involved in government and agriculture as well as history will find this a very informative book.It was recommended to me by a friend who was a teacher and loves reading.As I began reading I expected to find a "green" read but not at all.It gives facts in a very good historical novel way.I have really appreciated it as that is the type of book that I love and being so well-written is a huge plus. ... Read more

Product Description
The Great Depression is the " defining moment" to which most historians, economists, and political scientists connect the origins of the economic and social policies that have characterized American government in the second half of the twentieth century. In the most comprehensive collection of essays available on these topics, The Defining Moment evaluates the extent to which the Great Depression was a watershed period in the history of the American economy. This volume concludes that a large role of today's government and its methods of intervention derive from the crisis years of the 1930s. Sixty years later, the basic imprint of the defining moment is still visible. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Uneven but worth a look
The editors of "The Defining Moment" pose an interesting set of questions: Did the Great Depression cause a quantum increase of the federal government's involvement in the U.S. economy? If so, how and why?

Given the multitude of federal interventions into various sectors of the economy, the editors sensibly subdivided the questions into twelve topic areas, so that each chapter pertains to a particular program or sector. They thenassigned the topics to respected academic economic historians affiliatedwith the National Bureau of Economic Research. Most of the authors actuallytry to answer the editors' questions, which gives the collection unusual coherence for a conference volume. Still more remarkable, most of themwrite well. They offer arguments and evidence that are far more accessiblethan those a reader will typically find in academic economics journals. Theauthors do not examine the question of whether the new roles played by thefederal government during the 1930s contributed to, rather than onlyresulted from, the length and severity of the depression.

In their introduction to the volume, the editors set forth the quantum-increase or "defining moment" hypothesis and summarize the authors' answers. They provide useful line charts plotting the growing size of total government spending during the twentieth century, as a share of GNP and as divided among federal, state, and local governments. To my eyes, the time series for total government purchases of goods and services as a share of GNP shows two distinct upward steps. It first rises from a plateau ofaround 8 percent in the 1920s to a higher plateau of 14 to 15 percent in1932-40. It then (after the spike associated with World War II) rises to a still higher plateau of around 21 percent after 1952. As is consistent withthe theme developed by Robert Higgs in "Crisis and Leviathan" (1987), thecrisis of the Great Depression is associated with the first upward "ratchet effect." The second ratcheting upward is a puzzle not examined in the current volume, beyond a passing reference or two to "the cold war."

Like most conference volumes, "The DefiningMoment" is a mixed bag; some chapters are stronger than others. Few readerswill want to read it cover to cover, but anyone seriously interested in the economic history of the United States in the twentieth century particularlythose called upon to teach that subject should give the volume a look.

Great Teacher
Prof. Bordo is my instructor for my Financial & Monetary History of the US class here at Rutgers University.He is a brilliant guy and I am sure this book is great.I have never read it but he is no slouch. ... Read more

Product Description

Rife with palpable misery and often pleading with desperate urgency, the hundreds of letters assembled in Looking for the New Deal paint a bleak and accurate portrait of the female experience among Floridians during the Great Depression.

Searching for help at a time when desperation overwhelmed America, women in Florida shared the same goal as their counterparts elsewhere in the country--they wanted work. In pursuit of a means to provide for their families, these women doggedly, often naively, wrote letters asking for relief assistance.from agencies, charities, and state and federal government officials. In this volume Elna C. Green gathers more than three hundred letters written by Floridians that reveal the immediacy and intensity of their plight. The voices of women from all walks of life--black and white, rural and urban, old and young, historically poor and newly impoverished--testify to the determination and ingenuity of a generation facing trying times.

Green uses census records to set the letter writers in a demographic context and to explain that many of the hardships faced by these Floridians, such as unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, missing spouses, and unsympathetic social workers, were identical to those of women throughout the country. The struggles detailed here, however, reflect the Depression's extraordinarily devastating impact in Florida, where it followed on the heels of massive hurricanes, a medfly epidemic, and a land bust of monumental dimension.

Noting that only recently have scholars of the New Deal begun to consider the distinctive experiences of women during the 1930s, Green underscores the window for study opened by this collection. Corroborating the notion that poverty and its relief are highly gendered phenomena, these primary source materials record cries for help--sometimes deferential, sometimes insistent--and the often gender-specific solutions that the correspondents encountered. Views about charity and the state emerge from the letters, as well as the reality that social welfare has always been a process of constant negotiation, with people shuttling from one organization to another in search of assistance.

Product Description
Singleton examines the origins and implementation of the first federal welfare programs in the early 1930s. Based on his extensive research in the archives of federal welfare agencies, Singleton seeks to link the expansion and federalization of relief with recent efforts to reform "welfare." ... Read more

Product Description

Who were the people waiting in the bread lines and living in Hoovervilles? Who were the migrants heading North and West?Did anyone survive the Depression relatively unscathed? Giving a voice to stories often untold, Great Depression: People and Perspectives covers the full spectrum of American life, portraying the experiences of ordinary citizens during the worst economic crisis in the nation's history.

Great Depression shows how specific groups coped with the traumatic upheaval of the times, including rural Americans, women, children, African Americans, and immigrants.In addition, it offers revealing chapters on the conflict between social scientists and policymakers responding to the crisis, the impact of the Depression on the health of U.S. citizens, and the roles that American technology and Hollywood movies played in helping the nation survive.

Product Description
Describes the history surrounding the Great Depression, highlighting the causes and key figures. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This Series is FANTASTIC!
I LOVE this series of books, (The IN AMERICAN HISTORY series) even though I'm 59 years old and the books are for young adults, because the authors don't bore you with unnecessary details, meaningless meandering, nothing is added that has nothing to do with the subject, and they don't write as if the book was only going to be read by MENSA members (people with very high IQs). The books are well written, the information is precise and concise, and very easy to understand. For example, when I read a book about the St. Valentie's Day Massacre, I don'y need to know, nor do I care, what Bugs Moran's or Al Capones' favorite vegetable was. I want to know what complicity each had in the massacre! Pure and simply! Each book is around 130 pages long, well researched, and full of companion books on each subject if you want to know more. A Superb, First Rate series! And as usual; Amazons price are unbelievable... I got two of these books for 12 cents plus shipping,, and they're in Fine condition! ... Read more

Product Description
Compiles a history of the Great Depression, including the events that led up to it and the New Deal that followed, with chronologies, personal narratives, and documents. ... Read more

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Product Description
On October 24, 1929, America met the greatest economic devastation it had ever known. In this first installment of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear, Kennedy tells how America endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of that unprecedented calamity. Kennedy vividly demonstrates that the economic crisis of the 1930s was more than a reaction to the excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before the Crash, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, consuming capital and inflicting misery on city and countryside alike. Nor was the alleged prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays. Countless Americans eked out threadbare lives on the margins of national life. Roosevelt's New Deal wrenched opportunity from the trauma of the 1930s and created a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, but it was afflicted with shortcomings and contradictions as well. With an even hand Kennedy details the New Deal's problems and defeats, as well as its achievements. He also sheds fresh light on its incandescent but enigmatic author, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Marshalling unforgettable narratives that feature prominent leaders as well as lesser-known citizens, The American People in the Great Depression tells the story of a resilient nation finding courage in an unrelenting storm. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great
I couldn't put this book down.Great writer.And his first book, Part One is even better!

Don't Be Confused
Don't be confused like I was. I bought and read Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945 and thought it great. I then mistakenly thought this entry was a deeper dive into the Second World War but it is actually the latter half of a two volume set dividing the original book. I suggest you purchase the original single volume version as I was more impressed with Kennedy's work on the Great Depression. If interested I reviewed the single volume and awarded it five stars. His work on the Second World War did not compare and that is why this particular work receives three stars.

Buy the single volume version instead
This book was originally released as a single volume.In 2003, they rereleased it as a 2 volume set.The single volume version, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States), is still available and is much cheaper than buying these 2 volumes separately.

The first volume of a 2 vol set - enjoyable & insightful
David M. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his one volume work entitled "Freedom From Fear" - this volume is the first half of that work, and covers the period 1929-1939.

Mostly addressing the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Presidency of FDR, Kennedy has given us a thorough (yet somewhat biased) primarily economic-based analysis of the period.

He focuses on how American society was affected by the economic shifts during this period, which, naturally, was a critical portion of American history during these years, since the Depression was an economic crisis unlike any previously seen.

The one trouble I had with the book was that Kennedy differs from many people in saying that Herbert Hoover (FDR's predecessor in the White House) had the ideas on how to combat & beat the Depression, and FDR simply continued & implemented many of those ideas.He gives FDR virtually no credit except to say he's a master politician.

Kennedy does give the reader fantastic background information & helps the reader to understand what the daily economic plights were.If you're looking for a true social history (i.e. what the people were going through every day, look at a book like Robert McElvaine's "The Great Depression, 1929-1941").Overall, though, this is a very well written and concise volume covering the crucial years of the Depression era.Kennedy concludes with the German invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939), which is where the 2nd volume of this set inevitably will begin.

Fun to Read, and Insightful
I'm old enough to have live through the eventful 16-years (1929-1945)covered by Prof. David Kennedy's 2-volume history of that period of modern American history; for about half of that time, I was intellectually aware of what was happening; and I have read widely about the New Deal and WW-II.However, nothing I had been exposed to prior to reading "Freedom from Fear" gave me the context and an over-all understanding of the issues and obstacles that decision-makers faced during the Great Depression, the lead-up to WW-II, and the conduct of that war as have these wonderful two volumes.Even though I know full well how these matters played out, it was fascinating to learn how they came to be, and to realize that their outcomes were by no means foreordained nor inevitable. It is said about travel: "Getting there is half the fun;" in that sense, Kennedy is a marvelous tourguide to history.

One minor quibble: In true scholarly fashion, Kennedy
identifies sources for his many assertions and quotations in
footnotes; only a few footnotes contain additional explanatory
material that adds to the story.I would have preferred that the
many footnotes that merely give sources had been made into end
notes, available to those who want to check them but not
taking space on the pages of the narrative.
... Read more

Product Description
The Great Depression was the greatest economic disaster the nation had ever faced. When traditional policies failed, Americans looked to their leaders for guidance. While Franklin D. Roosevelt said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Huey Long claimed "unless we do share our wealth . . . we can never have a happy or free people." The speeches in this anthology examine the issues of the Great Depression, both explaining and questioning the policies used to alleviate America's economic suffering. (20030501) ... Read more

Product Description
The most devastating economic crash in modern times ushered in the Great Depression of the 1930s, which turned the lives of ordinary Americans upside down and left an indelible mark on the nation's psyche. In this lively and incisive history, acclaimed journalist and historian T.H. Watkins recounts an epic narrative of human suffering, social turmoil, and a political revolution that transformed the outline of American life and government - from unprecedented federal programs like Social Security and the Civilian Conservation Corps to local grassroots movements whose energies helped forge a new relationship between citizens and their government. Illustrated with more than 150 photographs and documents--many of them published here for the first time--THE GREAT DEPRESSION stands as the essential chronicle of a decade that shaped America's consciousness and character forever, in an age not unlike our own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

FDR's influence
This book very accurately portrays life in the 30's and the crucial role FDR played in ameliorating the devestating conditions of that era.Many current day commentators downplay or belittle the role that FDR played in this regard. This book corrects that misconception and sets the record straight.
Unfortunately, the photographs, though excellent and some of which I had never seen before, were of very poor quality in the paperback edition.

Broad and Very Interesting but not very Deep
Although rich and varied in its summary of the impact the "Great Depression" had on American culture, this continuation of the PBS documentary of the same name is broad but not very deep.As I only caught the "tail end" of the TV version of this documentary, my purpose for reading the book was to "round out" what I had missed in search of a better handle on the reasons that actually caused the "Great Depression." But unfortunately for me, on that particular issue, this book provided only limited answers. It merely "skates lightly along the surface" of the causes, in an almost polemical way: making only backhanded references to bank failures, stock market speculation, and the laxity of regulations, more generally.What I expected, but did not get, was a robust narrative or economic analysis to go with the somewhat "left-leaning" polemics.

Given our present search for solutions to the 2008 economic meltdown, and the "sea change" that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's government programs represented in altering the course of the social contract between government and the people, it did not seems unreasonable to me to expect a much more thorough analysis of the economic causes of the great depression. And while the book did not satisfy my demands on that score, it did provide something infinitely more valuable: It showed just beyond the text, that the ultimate schism in American culture is not just the one that moves along the gridline that divides us by race, but also along the deeper more philosophical issue of how the nation is to organize itself economically.

Here, both in the text, and in relief, we can see ever so clearly that it is the constant tension between what is perceived to be the "corporate good" and the "common good" that serves as the backdrop for so much of American politics and a great deal of American culture. From this photographic version of John Steinbeck's famous novel, "Grapes of Wrath," we get to see how these tensions came about; how they got played out and negotiated both through formal politics and through informal political action and pressures in the public spaces, and how they all can be vectored directly back to the major philosophical and cultural divisions in our culture: That is to say between "rugged individualism and Puritanism;" between the dwindling concept of the "common good" and the "rising emphasis on the corporate managed state;" between "socially adjusted organization man" and "socially free activist cultural man; between liberalism and conservatism, and indeed between "corporate profits" and government's responsibility for providing for the nation's welfare, or for the "common good."

That so much can be uncovered from reading between the lines of this history and abstracting from its haunting pictures, will simply leave the reader exhausted and in complete awe of how deep the psychic scars of the "great Depression," actually have been on American culture.

Four Stars

Too Political
I was looking for a book covering the lives of people during the depression era.I collect and sell depression-era glassware.It was cheaply made, with colors, to brighten any table and bring some cheer.

Anyway, the book did cover some about the lives and struggles peopleencountered, but about half way through it turned completely into a giant coverage of the politics of that time. I do not like politics, and could not finish the other half of the book.

I was disappointed, but if you want to learn about 1920's politics, this book is for you.

Brother,can you spare a dime?...
This is the first book I've read that is totally about the Great Depression.However,I have read all of Steinbeck's,Erskine Caldwell's and numerous by and about Woody Guthrie as well as many about Capone and other Gangsters.While these were all about the same period,they tended to zero in on specific ways of life,even though one aspect of the depression did not escape the effect of another.The black sharecroppers in the Deep South of Caldwell,the bootlegging,clubs and turf wars of Chicago of Capone and Ness,the Dust Bowl migrations of the Oakies of Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie give detailed insight of people living through these times but but each went on almost oblivous to each other.What Watkins has done is to deal with every
thing during the Depression and somewhat ties it all together. This is was no mean feat.
He leaned towards Government,Big Business ,Politics , Unions and other Organizations and shows how they were the source of the problems and in the final analysis had to be the solution. It was not the honest,hard working ,good,trusting majority of the people who suffered so much,that brought on this mess and they were sure helpless to correct it.As a matter of fact most of the systems prevented them by law and control from doing so.
Watkins gives most of the credit of getting things turned around to FDR and there is no doubt that he had to fight everyone to do it;in many cases his own party.This has often been the case in America from the times of Washington to Bush of today.Often the President stands alone and as Truman said "The buck stops here!" The great presidents had what it took to deal with the challenges of their times.The less great did not.
America was flat on its back and pulled itself up by its bootstraps without the help of any other country.In only a few years became strong enough to lead the charge to defeat the enemies in WWII.
The Commander of the Japanese Fleet that led the Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor said it all.."I fear all we have managed to do is to wake a sleeping giant." How right he was!
The book is well researched,well written,well organized with many excellent photographs.On top of that, it is easy reading--for a History book.

Subtle unsubstantiated bias
The pictures are plentiful and very helpful in this unbalanced overview of the Great Depression, the research and writing are admirable, but the tone shows a subtle and insidious bias in favor of unions, socialists and minorities.No where near enough attention is paid to the everyday struggle of people to simply survive.Watkins pays little attention to organized crime, bootlegging and petty thievery that raise the level of fear of all citizens during that period.Watkins also ignores the efforts made by many small, medium and large businesses help their employees get by, choosing instead to paint businesses as manifestations of the evils of capitalism.Far too emotional for a scholarly work. ... Read more