What Was Life Like in the 1930s?

The Great Depression

Take an in-depth look at the decade that defined a more...0 points

Take an in-depth look at the decade that defined a generation with The Great Depression, a four-part series from History.In the first years of the Great Depression, banks and businesses failed in record numbers as America struggled to come to grips with the disaster. Examine the changes that swept the shaken nation, from the landslide victory of FDR in 1932, to the California migrations of Dust Bowl farmers, in ''The Great Shake-Up.'' Faced with hard times, Americans sought release wherever they...0 points

The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Benjamin Roth more...0 points

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer in Youngstown, Ohio. After he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he decided to set down his impressions in his diary.This collection of those entries reveals another side of the Great Depression—one lived through by ordinary, middle-class Americans, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future. Roth's depiction of li...0 points

The Panic Is On: The Great American Depression as Seen by the Common Man

A fascinating overview of America's first Great De more...0 points

A fascinating overview of America's first Great Depression as captured in vintage newsreel film, documentaries, popular music, eyewitness accounts and period photographs. A DVD with two hours of captivating and entertaining period footage is accompanied by a CD with Depression themed period songs from the city and the countryside, plus a 32 page booklet filled with eloquent photographs and vivid first-hand accounts from the common man.0 points

The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine

A perennial backlist performer.0 points

Children of the Great Depression by Russell Freedman

As he did for frontier children in his enormously more...0 points

As he did for frontier children in his enormously popular Children of the Wild West, Russell Freedman illuminates the lives of the American children affected by the economic and social changes of the Great Depression. Middle-class urban youth, migrant farm laborers, boxcar kids, children whose families found themselves struggling for survival . . . all Depression-era young people faced challenges like unemployed and demoralized parents, inadequate food and shelter, schools they couldn't att...0 points

Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man

Down and Out in the Great Depression is a moving, revealing more...0 points

Down and Out in the Great Depression is a moving, revealing collection of letters by the forgotten men, women, and children who suffered through one of the greatest periods of hardship in American history. Sifting through some 15,000 letters from government and private sources, Robert McElvaine has culled nearly 200 communications that best show the problems, thoughts, and emotions of ordinary people during this time.Unlike views of Depression life "from the bottom up" that rely on recollections...0 points

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel's classic history of the Great Depression. more...0 points

Studs Terkel's classic history of the Great Depression. In this unique re-creation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. The book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and Clement Stone; a six-day bicycle racer; artists and writers; racketeers; speakeasy operators,....0 points

Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression by David E. Kyvig

The twenties and thirties witnessed dramatic chang more...0 points

The twenties and thirties witnessed dramatic changes in American life: increasing urbanization, technological innovation, cultural upheaval, and economic disaster. In this fascinating book, the prize-winning historian David Kyvig describes everyday life in these decades, when automobiles and home electricity became commonplace, when radio and the movies became broadly popular.0 points