"Women, whether subtly or vociferously, have always been a tremendous power in the destiny of the world," Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in It's Up to the Women, her book of advice to women of all ages on every aspect of life. Written at the height of the Great Depression, she called on women particularly to do their part--cutting costs where needed, spending reasonably, and taking personal responsibility for keeping the economy going. Whether it's the recommendation...

First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into haves and have nots evolves a drama that is intensely human...

"What did pioneers eat on the wide-open frontier as they made their way west? What kinds of clothes did people wear during the Civil War? What was school like in colonial America? Daily Life in US History answers all of these questions and more. Take a trip to the past to learn what everyday life was like in the different eras of US history." --

Applied Austrian economics doesn't get better than this. Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a staple of modern economic literature and crucial for understanding a pivotal event in American and world history.

Rothbard opens with a theoretical treatment of business cycle theory, showing how an expansive monetary policy generates imbalances between investment and consumption. He proceeds to examine the Fed's policies of the 1920s,

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From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Good War: A masterpiece of modern journalism and “a huge anthem in praise of the American spirit” (Saturday Review).
 
In this “invaluable record” of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of...

Abandoned by her father during the Depression, eleven year-old Elsie lives in the garage behind her old house with her mother, her grrandmother and her out-of work uncle. Elsie's friend Ernest, accompanies her as she searches for her father in the ciry, encountering unfriendly hoboes, food lines and shantytowns. After both her uncle and her mother disappear as well, Elsie and Ernest spend their time trying to get the "scoop" on a story about a local...

"On October 29, 1929, life in the United States took a turn for the worst. The stock market the system that controls money in America plunged to a record low. But this event was only the beginning of many bad years to come. By the early 1930s, one out of three people was not working. People lost their jobs, their houses, or both and ended up in shantytowns called Hoovervilles named for the president at the time of the crash. By 1933, many banks had...

"The acclaimed author of Ordinary Grace crafts a powerful novel about an orphan's life-changing adventure traveling down America's great rivers during the Great Depression, seeking both a place to call home and a sense of purpose in a world sinking into despair"-- 1932, Minnesota. The Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an...

"Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman-and a nation-struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She'd come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is...