In the early 1920s, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer fresh out of the army. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good - until the stock market crash of 1929. After nearly two years of economic crisis, it was clear that the heady prosperity of the Roaring Twenties would not return quickly. As Roth began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he set out to record his impressions in a diary - a document that would grow to span several volumes over more than a decade. Penning brief, clear-eyed notes on the crisis which unfolded around him, Roth struggled to understand the complex forces governing political and economic life. Yet he remained eager to learn from the crisis. As he wrote of what is now known as the Great Depression, "To the man past middle life it spells tragedy and disaster, but to those of us in the middle thirties it may be a great school of experience out of which some worth while lesson may be salvaged." Roth's words from that unique time seem to speak directly to readers today. His perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to those of our own era. Fearful of inflation and skeptical of big government, Roth yearned for signs of true recovery, and eventually formed his own theories of how a prudent person might survive hard times. The Great Depression: A Diary, edited by James Ledbetter, editor of Slate's "The Big Money," and Roth's son, Daniel B. Roth, reveals another side of the Great Depression - one lived through by ordinary, middle-class folks, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future.
The Great Depression: A Diary
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Author: Roth, Benjamin
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781586487997
Details:
Author: Roth, Benjamin
Brand: Brand: PublicAffairs
Edition: First Edition
Features:
- Used Book in Good Condition
Binding: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 288
Release Date: 13-10-2009
Package Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches Languages: English
EAN: 9781586487997
