Great Depression History

In history class, we’ve been taught that the Great Depression was all about crashing stock markets, snaking breadlines, and ecological disasters. We learned that FDR tried to put it right with the New Deal, but it was only World War II that finally succeeded in revitalizing the American economy. But that’s not the whole story.

For four consecutive years Shirley Temple was the world’s box-office champion, a record never equaled. By early 1935 her mail was reported as four thousand letters a week, and hers was the second-most popular girl’s name in the country. What distinguished Shirley Temple from every other Hollywood star of the period - and everyone since - was how brilliantly she shone.

During Leora Goff’s early decades, she gathered the tenacity, optimism and hope she would need throughout her long life. When she married Clabe Wilson, they became forged into parents who would shepherd their own family through two more great eras of world and local history--the Great Depression and WWII.

This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school—until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.

The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country's political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America's relationship with food was defined by abundance. But the collapse of the economy, in both urban and rural America, left a quarter of all Americans out of work and undernourished - shattering long-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the national larder.

In 2018, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Hank Paulson came together to reflect on the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis 10 years on. Recognizing that, as Ben put it, "the enemy is forgetting," they examine the causes of the crisis, why it was so damaging, and what it ultimately took to prevent a second Great Depression. And they provide to their successors in the United States and the finance ministers and central bank governors of other countries a valuable playbook for reducing the damage from future financial crises.

An inspiring account of America at its worst - and Americans at their best - woven from the stories of Depression-era families who were helped by gifts from the author's generous and secretive grandfather.

For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837.

Main Street is “a triumph.” Erik Brady, Buffalo News. On a Roller Coaster: 1902-1939 is the fifth book in the series Main Street: The History of Buffalo. The era is a roller-coaster ride of economic boom and bust—and mayors of titanic achievement. At the start of the book, as the Pan-American Exposition in North Buffalo is torn down, a city of steel rises along Lake Erie just south of town—the massive new steel plant. In the business center of town, churches of Joseph’s Ellicott’s Buffalo are selling off their lots and moving north from Downtown to be closer to with parishioners...

If you want to discover the captivating history of the United States of America, then pay attention....

The Roaring 20s are in full swing and people are living the good life, making money, and having fun. Henry Ford just introduced the forty-hour work week and there is plenty to celebrate. Nobody seems to have a care in the world, except for Elizabeth McNally, who can’t shake the feeling that there are things to fear just over the horizon, even though she can’t explain why. The McNally family is prospering; Thomas, the oldest McNally son, is still being a thorn in the side of Toledo's gangster element with his fearless newspaper coverage of their crimes, while his brother Peter’s garage...

The 1930s are the darkest days of the Great Depression. Factories are closing their doors, millions of people are out of work, men are riding the rails searching for elusive jobs that seldom exist, and a thriving way of life that has been cherished is disappearing. Desperate people are doing desperate things just to survive, while labor strikes and veterans’ protests are turning violent. Roving gangs of outlaws have become celebrities to many people, who asked themselves why a man robbing a bank with a gun is any worse than a banker in a suit stealing someone’s life savings, home, or ...

This vibrant portrait of 1930s culture masterfully explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of distressed Americans during the Great Depression.

Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called “one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature,” has brought together a staggering range of material, from epic Dust Bowl migrations to zany screwball comedies, elegant dance musicals, wildly popular swing bands, and streamlined art deco designs.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation tells the inspiring, deeply personal story of his own family's greatest generation: his parents, who embodied the can-do spirit that enabled them to survive the Great Depression and World War II, and to help build the American century.

The Great Depression took place during the 1930s in the United States. There was huge unemployment, banking failures, declines in factory production, and increases in poverty and homelessness.

In the best-selling tradition of The Devil in the White City, award-winning author Brian Hicks tells the explosive story of the Morro Castle, the elegant luxury liner that burned off the coast of New Jersey on September 7, 1934. The captain died under mysterious circumstances seven hours before his ship caught fire off the New Jersey coast.

Return to Sarah's Valley is a follow-up story to Sarah's Valley, which was published in 2012 by the same author, Sharon Mierke. In Sarah's Valley, Patrick Smithson meets Frank Lawdry. Frank, who prefers his Abenaki name, Winnipesaukee, spends the night recalling his life story. He and his sister, Sarah, were left orphans when everyone on a wagon train died in a horrific tragedy. It was their story of survival. Return to Sarah's Valley continues where Sarah's Valley leaves off. Now an old man in his nineties, Patrick meets Michael Lawdry, one of Winnipesaukee's descendants, and tells him how...

In 1932, America faced an economic crisis even more severe than the one it has been experiencing recently. The issue then, as now, was how to address it. When President Franklin Roosevelt came into office, he faced more economic problems than any president since has ever faced, but he came equipped with unique and creative solutions to them.

Taming the Street describes how President Franklin D. Roosevelt battled to regulate Wall Street in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression. With deep reporting and vivid storytelling, Diana B. Henriques takes listeners back to a time when America’s financial landscape was a jungle ruled by the titans of vast wealth, largely unrestrained by government. Roosevelt ran for office in 1932 vowing to curb that ruthless capitalism and make the world of finance safer for ordinary savers and investors.

Just as today’s observers struggle to justify the workings of the free market in the wake of a global economic crisis, an earlier generation of economists revisited their worldviews following the Great Depression. The Great Persuasion is an intellectual history of that project. Angus Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider many of the most basic assumptions of our market-centered world.