Title: The hungry years : a narrative history of the Great Depression in America /
Authors: Watkins, T. H. 1936-2000
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.,
Year: 1999
Subjects: Depressions United States; Depressions United States Personal narratives.; United States History; United States History; United States Social conditions; United States Social conditions
Abstract: It was the worst of times and the best of times. It was an era of unprecedented crisis and a time of unprecedented courage. Now, in a single, comprehensive volume, The Hungry Years tells the story of the Great Depression through the eyes of the people who lived through it. Less concerned with the power brokers in Washington than with the daily struggles of ordinary people at the grassroots level across America, it draws on little-known oral histories, memoirs, local press, and scholarly monographs to capture the voices of men and women in a time of extreme crisis. The result is a richly detailed narrative that traces the stages of the disaster chronologically without losing touch with the personal wounds it inflicted or the ways in which people responded. Book jacket. Also includes information on bank failures, blacks, California, Civil Works Administration (CWA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), relief measures, drought, Dust Bowl, dust storms, farm foreclosures, farmers, Great Plains, the land, lynching, Mexican Americans (Chicanos), migrant life in California, migrations, National Industrial Recovery Act, National Recovery Administration, New Deal, plantation system, poverty, relief, Resettlement Administration, sharecroppers, the South, strikes, tenant farmers, unemployment, unionism, violence, wages, women, Works Progress Administration (WPA), etc.
Contents: Prelude: Careening Down Main Street, 1929 -- Part I IN THE CRUCIBLE -- 1. Boundaries of Havoc -- 2. The Graveyard of Hope -- 3. The Dance of Self-Reliance -- 4. "The Long Slow-Match of Destiny" -- 5. Making Ashes of Loyalty -- Part II HOLDING UP THE WALLS -- 6. The Present Instrument of Their Wishes -- 7. A Scuffling Pageant of Relief -- 8. The Scream of the Eagle -- 9. "The President Wants You to Organize!" -- 10. Freedom's Fire -- 11. The Machinery of Pride -- 12. Another Form of Hunger -- 13. The Lions of Labor -- Part III THE POLUGHLAND CURVE -- 14. Revolt in the Heartland -- 15. Further Down the Country -- 16. Huelga! -- 17. An Evil in the Season -- 18. A Perfect Laboratory -- Postlude: Dismantling the Dream, 1939.