July 2009
The Great Depression
This month our focus on history is the Great Depression and the era of the 1930s. Below you'll find some of our picks of the collection, plus some articles from our databases (you'll need to log in with your library card details to view these). Enjoy!
Books:
The age of the dictators- By David G. Williamson.
- "In his new book, David Williamson examines the regimes that characterized this age. Nazism, Stalinist Russia, and Italian Fascism are dealt with alongside the authoritarian regimes of Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Examined both individually and in comparison with each other, Williamson leads us to some striking revelations and uncomfortable truths regarding the roots, reality and impact of these dictatorial states and the men who ran them." (Book Jacket)
Freedom from fear: the American people in depression and war, 1929-1945- By David M. Kennedy
- "Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom From Fear 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. ... The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked world wide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their own way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world. Freedom From Fear explains how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. ...Freedom From Fear is a comprehensive and colourful account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War." (Annotation Library Catalogue)
The forsaken: from the Great Depression to the Gulags: hope and betrayal in Stalin's Russia- By Tim Tzouliadis.
- "Of all the great movements of population to and from the United States, the least heralded is the migration, in the depths of the Depression of the 1930s, of thousands of men, women and children to Stalin's Russia. Through official records, memoirs, newspaper reports and interviews, Tzouliadis searches the most closely guarded archive in modern history to reconstruct the emigrants' story - one of honesty, vitality and idealism brought up against the brutal machinery of repression." (Book Jacket)
The moral consequences of economic growth- By Benjamin M. Friedman.
- "Are we right," Benjamin M. Friedman asks, "to care so much about economic growth as we clearly do?" To answer, Friedman reaches beyond economics. He examines the political and social histories of the large Western democracies - particularly of the United States since the Civil War - distinguishing times of generally rising living standards from those of pervasive stagnation to illustrate how rising incomes render a society more open and democratic. ...Friedman also delineates the role of economic growth in determining which developing nations extend the broadest freedoms to their citizenry. He makes clear that growth, rather than just the level of living standards, is key to effecting political and social liberalization in the third world. But he also warns that the democratic values of countries even as wealthy as our own are at risk whenever incomes stagnate for extended periods. Merely being rich is no protection against a society's retreat into rigidity and intolerance once enough of its citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead. Finally, Friedman shows us why, if America is to strengthen democratic institutions around the world as a bulwark against terrorism and social unrest, we must aggressively pursue growth at home and promote worldwide economic expansion beyond what purely market-driven forces would create. And for the United States, he offers concrete suggestions for policy steps to achieve those objectives." (Book Jacket)
Origins of the crash- By Roger Lowenstein.
- "Drawing on his sense of history, Lowenstein inquires how a financial system that arose out of the wreckage of the Depression and that was intended to avert the miscues of that era could ultimately repeat the very same scenario of massive speculation and corruption leading to collapse. He discovers the roots of the recent crisis in the financial culture that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as America encouraged companies to hand out ever-greater packages of stock options to their executives. In an enthralling narrative, Lowenstein ties together all of the characters of the great boom and bust: Alan Greenspan, Jack Grubman, Jack Welch, Abby Cohen, Henry Blodget, and a host of dot-com pioneers. But it is the collective rendering of such figures -- the unique portrayal of the culture of the era -- that truly distinguishes Origins of the Crash as the book that will frame our appreciation of the period. Just as John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash was the canonical text of 1929, Lowenstein's Origins of the Crash is destined to be the definitive account of the 1990s." (Book Jacket)
From our online databases:
- The Great Depression, 1929-1939
- DISCovering World History. Online Edition. Gale, 2003. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale.
- This is a reference article from our History Resource Center database that briefly discusses the effect of the Great Depression on the United States, Herbert Hoover as the "do-nothing" President, and FDR's New Deal.
- Causes of the Great Depression
- History in Dispute, Vol. 3: American Social and Political Movements, 1900-1945. Robert J. Allison, ed. St. James Press, 2000. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale
- This is a reference article from our History Resource Center database that describes two different viewpoints about what caused the Great Depression.
Viewpoint 1: The Great Depression was caused by a global economic crisis as well as poor investment practices in the United States.
Viewpoint 2: The Great Depression was caused by a decline in spending and consumption in the United States, not simply by the stock-market crash or the mistakes of the Federal Reserve.
