Great Depression

The Contemporary US Right’s Roots in 1930s Union-Busting: Interview with Kathryn Olmsted

The New Deal's support for labor rights pushed the large California agricultural interests, who previously embraced "big government" irrigation projects, to an aggressive anti-statist position based in keeping control over their workplaces and their profits. 

The Photographers Who Captured the Great Depression

Intended as a promotional program for New Deal agricultural programs, the Farm Security Adminstration's sponsorship of Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and other photographers sparked an aesthetic revolution. 

When the Government Supported Writers

by Max Holleran

"With its reminder that creative labor was once seen—like a strategic reserve of fuel, weapons, or medical supplies—as worthy of federal protection, Republic of Detours mobilizes New Deal history to help us imagine what our society would be like if federal tax dollars supported a reserve army of muralists, poets, and oral historians."

How the LAPD Guarded California’s Borders in the 1930s

Los Angeles's conservative establishment used tropes of cultural inferiority to justify efforts to stop poor white Dust Bowl refugees from entering the state in the 1930s, 

F.D.R. Didn’t Just Fix the Economy

Times columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historian Eric Rauchway to argue that Franklin Roosevelt envisioned the New Deal as a renewal of core democratic principles that the government should serve the needs of the people and be accountable to them. 

Whitewashing the Great Depression (Review)

Three new books describe the role of administrator Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration in filtering the photographic work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee to emphasize the depression's burden on rural whites. 

America's Crises Would Be Daunting for Any President-Elect. But History Can Teach Biden to Navigate Them

by Jon Meacham

A popular historian who has been advising Joe Biden with historical perspective argues the president-elect is disposed to empathy and pragmatism and will work to ease the nation's divisions. 

John Steinbeck, Bard of the American Worker (Review)

Hailing him as a “major figure in American literature,” Souder further claims Steinbeck has “given the world several books that would last forever.”

Millions of Young Men Toiled in FDR’s ’Tree Army’ to Help End the Great Depression. Could it Work Again?

Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon are introducing legislation for a revived version of the New Deal-Era Civilian Conservation Corps, seeking to create jobs in forestry, parks, and land conservation. 

Once Upon a Time, When America Paid Its Writers

In Jason Boog’s new book, "The Deep End," he offers colorful and often grim profiles of nine Depression-era writers and connects their stories to the struggles that writers face today. Even before our current economic crisis, it was a depressingly apt comparison.

The Children’s Nutrition and Dental Clinics of Mobile: Public Health, Volunteerism, and the Color Line during the Great Depression

by Daryn Glassbrook

The Depression did not create a hunger and malnutrition crisis in the United States. It brought to the fore deep-seated structural weaknesses in our economic, political, and health systems that enabled this crisis to boil over.

A Job Guarantee Costs Far Less Than Unemployment

The bold policy for not just weathering the crisis, but coming out better.

Re-stabilizing the Middle Class and the Poor: Lessons from the 1930s

by David Stebenne

For a long time it seemed as though the 1930s era of high unemployment was a kind of “great exception” in American history, but now it has appeared again, suddenly and unexpectedly, just as it did in the early 1930s. 

The Great Depression, Coronavirus Style: Crashes, Then and Now

by Nomi Prins

Monetary policy responses to the current crisis can't fix either the structural problems that make the economy vulnerable to severe disruption or the virus and public health crisis that underlie that disruption. Governments must choose to take coordinated action on multiple fronts. 

One Parallel for the Coronavirus Crisis? The Great Depression

Historians Erk Loomis and Michael Goldfield are among an interdisciplinary group of scholars describing the process by which the New Deal transformed American society. 

When the Economy Collapses, Talk Is Cheap—Just Look What Led Up to the Great Depression

by Robert Dallek

For American leaders, the Great Depression is as much a lesson in what not to do as it is in what to do.

7.7 Million Young People Are Unemployed. We Need a New ‘Tree Army.’

by Collin O'Mara

Today, there’s plenty to do for a revitalized conservation corps that would put young Americans back to work.

Lessons for a Depression: A Conversation with Historian Eric Rauchway

Historian Eric Rauchway compares the Great Depression and our current pandemic-induced economic decline, Franklin Roosevelt’s democratic principles, and the role of a competent government in preventing authoritarianism. 

The Lessons of the Great Depression

by Lizabeth Cohen

The larger lesson the New Deal offers is that recovery is a complex and painful process that requires the participation of many, not directives from a few. And that, ultimately, we’re all in this together.

What Happened to My Future: The Pivotal Years of 1914, 1929, and 2020

by Walter G. Moss

There aren't many comparisons to 2020 as a year when illusions of normalcy and prosperity were shattered.