Depression History

In the 1930s, photographer Dorothea Lange traveled the American West documenting the experiences of those devastated by the Great Depression. She wanted to use the power of the image to effect political change, but even she could hardly have expected the effect that a simple portrait of a worn-looking woman and her children would have on history.

A fascinating, “rich, and generous” (Financial Times) look at the treatment of depression by an award-winning science writer that blends popular science, narrative history, and memoir. Is depression a persistent low mood, or is it a range of symptoms? Can it be expressed through a single...

The “extraordinary” (New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) story of FDR’s fight for the soul of American capitalism—from award-winning journalist Diana B. Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust “I thought I was well versed in the New...

A warm, intimate account of the love between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok—a relationship that, over more than three decades, transformed both women's lives and empowered them to play significant roles in one of the most tumultuous periods in American history In 1932, as her...

The central volume in the definitive biography of America's most important First Lady. "Engrossing" (Boston Globe). The captivating second volume of this Eleanor Roosevelt biography covers tumultuous era of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the gathering storms of World War II, the years...

A beguiling blend of noir detective story and science fiction perfect for fans of Michael Chabon and Emily St. John Mandel, “this fiercely intelligent and utterly original debut” (Anna North, New York Times bestselling author) imagines a world where emotions have been weaponized, and a...

Christopher Knowlton, author of Cattle Kingdom and former Fortune writer, takes an in-depth look at the spectacular Florida land boom of the 1920s and shows how it led directly to the Great Depression. The 1920s in Florida was a time of incredible excess, immense wealth, and precipitous collapse...

Once in Golconda "In this book, John Brooks-who was one of the most elegant of all business writers-perfectly catches the flavor of one of history's best-known financial dramas: the 1929 crash and its aftershocks. It's packed with parallels and parables for the modern reader." -From the Foreword...

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.

Our country’s history unequivocally shows that after every significant economic expansion, a meaningful correction and a total war follow. In the Roaring Twenties, an enormous stock market rise and economic boom gave way to the Great Depression. The middle of the 19th century also saw an expansion followed by a depression. And if we examine our history, dating back to our independence, a cycle repeats approximately every 80 years: The result is an economic crisis and total war that lasts several years. The first such crisis was the American Revolutionary War, which was from 1775 to 1783.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman shows how today's crisis parallels the events that caused the Great Depression - and explains what it will take to avoid catastrophe. In 1999, Paul surveyed the economic crisis that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and warned that those crises...

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.

In her first novel since The God of War, critically acclaimed author Marisa Silver takes Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph as inspiration for a breathtaking reinvention—a story of two women, one famous and one forgotten, and of the remarkable legacy of their singular encounter...

Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong. With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status.

Despite my best intentions, I was beginning to understand how my dad saw the world. The shadows haunting every living thing. The secrets inside the lies wrapped in bullshit. Even Gracie’s box of pills was beginning to make sense. For the past five years, Hayley Kincain and her father, Andy, have been on the road, trying to outrun the memories that haunt them both. They moved back to Andy’s hometown to try a “normal” life, but the horrors he saw in the war threaten to destroy their lives.

In this moving story, the New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation chronicles the values and lessons he absorbed from his parents and other people who worked hard to build lives on the prairie during the first half of the twentieth century. “A spare, elegant masterpiece...

In this timely new P.I . Guide, Murphy reveals the stark truth: free market failure didn't cause the Great Depression and the New Deal didn't cure it. Shattering myths and politically correct lies, he tells why World War II didn't help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression; why it took FDR to make the Depression "Great"; and why Herbert Hoover was more like Obama and less like Bush than the liberal media would have you believe.

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

“A beautifully written novel, laced with history and music.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven An uplifting novel about the families we create and the places we call home. It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A powerful selection of the letters Tom Brokaw received in response to his towering #1 bestseller The Greatest Generation. “When I wrote about the men and women who came out of the Depression, who won great victories and made lasting sacrifices in World War...