American Depression

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This Pulitzer Prize–winning history tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s.

In 1920-1921, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most 21st-century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No "stimulus" was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late 1921. Yet by 1929, the economy spiraled downward as the Hoover administration adopted the policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place.

A groundbreaking, “lavishly informative” (The New York Times) portrait of the six generations that currently live in the United States and how they connect, conflict, and compete with one another—from the acclaimed author of Generation Me and iGen. Upending the conventional theory that...

A revelatory and unexpected examination of the political economy of the past century—and an argument that policymakers in government, not the mythical “free market,” created the most dynamic economy the world has ever known. For many decades, a sacred myth has ruled the minds of...

You’ve Got Mail meets Abbott Elementary in this sweet, sexy romantic comedy for fans of Lynn Painter and Lyssa Kay Adams. School counselor Lucy Galindo has a secret. To her coworkers, friends, and even family, she’s shy, sweet, and constantly struggling to hold off disaster (read: manage...

One of our nation’s most prominent writers discovers the truth about how to live a long and happy life from the centenarian next door in this “original and highly readable account of a splendid American life” (The Wall Street Journal). When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas...

This exciting pioneering story, based on actual events, introduces readers to a fascinating chapter in American history, when FDR set up a New Deal colony in Alaska to give loans and land to families struggling during the Great Depression. Terpsichore can’t wait to follow in Laura Ingalls...

Self-care is a powerful, evidence-based medicine for the mind. Mental health is the driving force behind every decision we make—how we live, work, and love. Many of us suffer from depression and anxiety, which impede our choices and quality of life, and despite the proliferation of...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad comes a sweeping historical novel set in the Depression-era and wartime New York, where a young...

A national bestseller, Authentic Happiness launched the revolutionary new science of Positive Psychology—and sparked a coast-to-coast debate on the nature of real happiness. According to esteemed psychologist and bestselling author Martin Seligman, happiness is not the result of good genes or...

Harry S. Dent predicted our current economic crisis, and he foresees still more to come. He predicts that we are headed further towards a major depression reminiscent of Japan’s major recession more than a decade ago, from which their real estate market has yet to recover. With the current...

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin...

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and NPR “We come to see in FDR the magisterial, central figure in the greatest and richest political tapestry of our nation’s entire history” —Nigel Hamilton, Boston Globe “Meticulously researched and authoritative” —Douglas...

Terrie had made it: She had launched her own public relations company with such clients as Eddie Murphy and Johnnie Cochran. Yet she was in constant pain, waking up in terror, overeating in search of relief. For 30 years she kept on her game face of success, exhausting herself daily to satisfy her clients' needs while neglecting her own. When she finally collapsed, she had no clue what was wrong or if there was a way out.

Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success. Lincoln found the solace and tactics he needed to deal with the nation’s worst crisis in the “coping...

'A delightful novel about fate, second chances, and how our worst moments are only the gateways to the best moments to come. When you're finished, you'll be writing your own reverse bucket list to check off.' --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author New York Times bestselling author...

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since...

Smart, edgy, hilarious, and unabashedly raunchy New York Times bestselling author Samantha Irby explodes off the printed page in her uproarious first collection of essays. Irby laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood: chin hairs...

In this haunting sequel to her deliciously scary debut, Cheryl Isaacs (Mohawk) explores the sharp edges of lingering trauma and the bonds of love that heal us. Only weeks ago, Avery pulled her best friend, Key, from the deadly black water. The cycle from her family’s Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk)...

The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate Black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of Whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture.