We learn that our way of life can change practically overnight. We learn that suffering on a massive scale can happen from just a few high-level missteps. But perhaps most importantly, we learn that the American spirit has an amazing capacity for resourcefulness and resilience -- a lesson that might comfort us in our own times of worry.
Works Cited
"Always Lending a Helping Hand: Sevier County Remembers the Great Depression." New Deal Network. Web. Retrieved 19 Sept 2011 from http://newdeal.feri.org/sevier/index.htm
Downing, David. The Great Depression. Chicago: Reed Educational Publishing, 2001.
Horowitz, Irving Lewis. "A Child's View of the Great Depression." Antioch Review. Fall 2009, Vol. 67, Issue 4. p 678-681.
McNeese, Tim. The Great Depression, 1929-1938. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010.
Schultz, Stanley. The Great Depression: A Primary Source History. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2005.
Annotated Bibliography
"Always Lending a Helping Hand: Sevier County Remembers the Great Depression." New Deal Network. Web. Retrieved 19 Sept 2011 from http://newdeal.feri.org/sevier/index.htm
This website is a wonderful source of first-person accounts of daily life during the Great Depression. Funded by the Utah State Historical Society, the project documented the oral history of members of rural Sevier County, Utah who had lived through the Depression. The stories include accounts of working for the WPA, recycling old clothes, canning and digging potato pits, and other elements of poor rural life in the 30s.
Downing, David. The Great Depression. Chicago: Reed Educational Publishing, 2001.
A good general source for information about the Great Depression, with some useful analysis of the factors leading up to the Crash of 1929. Includes some interesting primary source quotes.
Horowitz, Irving Lewis. "A Child's View of the Great Depression." Antioch Review. Fall 2009, Vol. 67, Issue...
p 678-681.
A personal essay from a literary journal, in which a college professor recounts his childhood in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Includes some wonderful narratives about the role of film in children's lives, and the resourcefulness with which children found comfort in each other and their families.
Kyvig, David. Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004.
An exhaustive look at the conditions of daily life for Americans in the 20s and 30s, written by a professional historian. Particularly detailed in its description of the emerging role of electricity and automobiles in practical life. Gives a good overview of the enormous changes in mindset that took place between 1930 and 1940.
McNeese, Tim. The Great Depression, 1929-1938. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010.
Another general information source, a little bit simplistic, but with a wealth of information about the impact of the Depression on the every day lives of Americans. Includes helpful graphs, timelines, and charts for statistical reference.
Roth, Benjamin and James Ledbetter. The Great Depression: A Diary. Philadelphia: Perseus Books, 2009.
This is the diary of Benjamin Roth, edited and published by his son. Roth, an Ohio attorney with a wife and young children when the market crashed, kept a daily journal during the period between 1931 and 1941. It provides great insight on the effect of the Depression on everyday middle-class life.
Schultz, Stanley. The Great Depression: A Primary Source History. New York: Gareth Stevens, 2005.
Part of the "In Your Own Words" series, this book offers a selection of primary sources and quotes from politicians, entertainers, journalists, and average Americans during the Great Depression. Especially helpful are the segments concerning the response of the entertainment industry to the Great…
