Play within a play
Prof. P
History 2010
07 September 2010
The Great Depression:America, 1929-1941
This book was written by Mc Elvaine back in 1993.
His ideology of the Great Depression in the United States is a well putting together narrative, largely chronological. In this interpretive history, the author discusses the causes and the results of the worst depression in American history, covering the time from 1929 to 1941. Its emphasis is on people and politics, with portraits of Hoover and Roosevelt and descriptions of events and conflicts in and around elections, parties and factions, Congress, workers’ organizations, relief programs, and so forth. He also examines the causes of this cataclysmic event, its impact upon the American people, and the political, governmental, and cultural responses to it.
There’s no serious attempt at economic history, there’s not a single table of figures, but the economic debates about the Depression and its causes are touched on in the opening chapters. There’s much more depth to the social history, though that is mostly approached from the perspective of planners and programs; for the views of ordinary Americans, McElvaine draws
heavily on the letters written to Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. There’s also a (fascinating to me) account of the Federal Theatre Project and the other “art” relief projects.
The author dives into popular literature and films of the era to build a narrative of the public’s changing values, from competition-based acquisitive individualism in the Roaring Twenties to cooperation-based economic moralism
McElvaine attempts were to place the Depression in the broader currents of US history, with a particular focus on large-scale, long-term changes in attitudes and values. This sometimes seems over-simplistic, but does give his narrative a guiding framework: the only real awkwardness comes with attempts to link the Great Depression to current politics. I don’t wish to romanticize the Great Depression era as some golden age of cooperation and community, but I do believe there are applicable lessons to be learned from the way in which communities responded to the suffering of their time, particularly as we stand on the shifting sands of a cliff called “collapse
Little background is assumed by The Great Depression ? I had no problems following it despite my sketchy knowledge of United States history ? and McElvaine’s approach makes for easy reading. As well as making a fine introduction, it provides a basis for further more specialized reading.
I completely disagree with McElvaine’s approach that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Keynesian economics did not rescued the nation from total catastrophe, but he also points out
that “…the changing mix of American values in the Depression-was of even more significance than was Roosevelt himself.”(324) Roosevelt’s agenda would have fallen on deaf and smug ears ten years earlier, and it could not have succeeded without a change in values in the American people that was able to resonate with the values of the New Deal. I hasten to add that I do believe that it was the New Deal that ultimately pulled the nation out of the depression. In my opinion the FDR administration and the New Deal saved capitalism from the shock of its worst excesses by being pragmatic, and not ideologically rigid. I am not denying World War II and the launching of the military industrial complex that did help and has continued to “prevent” depressions and mask more protracted, less visible economic and social injustice.
The book ends by concluding that nothing the New Deal did ever cured the Depression (which only ended with the start of World War II), but that the emerging values of Depression-era America laid the groundwork for the U.S. government we know today.
Yet I think the author’s opinions are very revealing, even if I do not agree with most of them. The Great Depression was a great trauma. I think it is important to understand the time as it was back then.
In short, this book is an respected study of the HISTORY of the Great Depression era, with a dose of the author’s liberal opinions. The dates, facts, people and events are explained thoroughly and in a way that is easy to read. Personally, I think a good biography of Franklin Roosevelt is a better place to start, but this book is an important addition to the literature.
Overall, I would recommend this volume to anyone who has an interest in what effect this horrendous economic crisis had on the people of America, as long as the reader expects to look at the people & not the policies of the administration.
Work Cited
Elizabeth Chisholm ?Professor of Arts and Letters and chair of the Department of History ?
Arsenal of democracy (prod/wr/dir. Susan Bellows)
New Deal, New York (prod/wr/dir. Dante J. James
