U.S. History For Dummies


Book Description

Now revised — the easy-to-understand guide to the story of America Want to better understand U.S. History? This friendly book serves as your tour guide through the important events of America's past and present, introducing you to the people who helped to shape history. From pre-Columbus to the American Revolution, from Watergate to Iraq to Barack Obama, you'll discover fascinating details that you won't find in dry history texts! They're coming to America — explore early civilizations, meet Native Americans, and see how the development of the English colonies led to slavery and the American Revolution From Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln — examine the contributions of great Americans as well as the discovery of gold, the birth of California, the Civil War, and Manifest Destiny America grows up — be there during the conquering of the West, industrial development, and the invention of the light bulb and the telephone The impact of the World Wars — understand the sweeping changes these epochal events brought to America and the rest of the world The Cold War, Camelot, and Clinton — take a closer look at the Korean War and communism, the fabulous '50s, JFK, Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, Reaganomics, and the Clinton years From the '90s to now — witness the birth of the microchip, the impact of hanging chads in a presidential election, the largest terrorist attack on American soil, and the growing economic crisis Open the book and find: Ten important events that defined American culture Interesting Americans, from presidents to gangsters to sports heroes How America fought to win independence from England Details about all the major wars and their long-term effects Insight into the roots of slavery Inventions that changed life for Americans The impact of the atomic bomb The Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence




Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal


Book Description

In this timely new P.I. Guide, Murphy reveals the stark truth: free market failure didn't cause the Great Depression and the New Deal didn't cure it. Shattering myths and politically correct lies, he tells why World War II didn t help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression; why it took FDR to make the Depression Great; and why Herbert Hoover was more like Obama and less like Bush than the liberal media would have you believe. Free-market believers and capitalists everywhere should have this on their bookshelf and in their briefcases.




A Rabble of Dead Money


Book Description

The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America -- with its boom in automobiles, electricity, credit lines, radio, and movies -- certainly presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. The totality of the collapse shocked the nation, and its duration scarred generations to come. In this lucid and fast-paced account of the cataclysm, award-winning writer Charles R. Morris pulls together the intricate threads of policy, ideology, international hatreds, and sheer individual cantankerousness that finally pushed the world economy over the brink and into a depression. While Morris anchors his narrative in the United States, he also fully investigates the poisonous political atmosphere of postwar Europe to reveal how treacherous the environment of the global economy was. It took heroic financial mismanagement, a glut-induced global collapse in agricultural prices, and a self-inflicted crash in world trade to cause the Great Depression. Deeply researched and vividly told, A Rabble of Dead Money anatomizes history's greatest economic catastrophe -- while noting the uncanny echoes for the present.




The Return of Depression Economics


Book Description

The author of "The Age of Diminished Expectations" returns with a sobering tour of the global economic crises of the last two years.




The Forgotten Man


Book Description

It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. These are the people at the heart of Amity Shlaes's insightful and inspiring history of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Some of those figures were well known, at least in their day—Andrew Mellon, the Greenspan of the era; Sam Insull of Chicago, hounded as a scapegoat. But there were also unknowns: the Schechters, a family of butchers in Brooklyn who dealt a stunning blow to the New Deal; Bill W., who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the name of showing that small communities could help themselves; and Father Divine, a black charismatic who steered his thousands of followers through the Depression by preaching a Gospel of Plenty. Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great—in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another. Authoritative, original, and utterly engrossing, The Forgotten Man offers an entirely new look at one of the most important periods in our history. Only when we know this history can we understand the strength of American character today.




Depression For Dummies


Book Description

"What do you have to be depressed about?" Bet you've heard that one before. Or how about, "You're depressed? Just get over it!" Easier said than done, right? Or here's a favorite, "They have a pill for that now, you know." Unfortunately, such naïve armchair psychology rarely works for someone suffering from the very real plight of depression. All it does is seek to trivialize depression and characterize depressed people as "whiners" who have nothing better to do than to "complain about their lives." But the truth is, depression is a very real problem. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that, on any given day, 121 million people worldwide suffer from depression. And depression rates continue to increase – for example, kids exhibit depression at nearly ten times the rate of previous generations. Theories abound as to why depression rates are increasing, but regardless of the cause, this scourge continues to rob its victims of happiness, joy, and the capacity to give and receive love. So why Depression For Dummies, when there's already a glut of self-help books on the market peddling so-called cures and remedies for depression? Because this book satisfies the need for a straight-talking, no-nonsense resource on depression. The only agenda of Depression For Dummies is to present you with the facts on depression and explain the options for dealing with it. Rest assured, this is no infomercial in a yellow and black cover. Here's just a sampling of what you'll find in Depression For Dummies: Demystifying the types of depression Discovering what goes on in the body of a depressed person Detecting and diagnosing depression Seeking help through therapy and medication Modifying depressed behavior and solving life's headaches Dealing with depression resulting from grief and relationship issues Cutting through the hype of alternative treatments for depression Moving beyond depression: Avoiding relapses and pursuing a happy life Top Ten lists on getting rid of a your bad mood and helping your kids and other family members out of depression So, whatever your level of depression – whether you suffer from occasional bouts or you find yourself seriously debilitated by depression – Depression For Dummies can give you the insight and tools you need to once again find enjoyment and happiness in life. All it takes is one step.




A Square Meal


Book Description

James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner From the author of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her husband, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced—the Great Depression—and how it transformed America’s culinary culture. The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country’s political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America’s relationship with food was defined by abundance. But the collapse of the economy, in both urban and rural America, left a quarter of all Americans out of work and undernourished—shattering long-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the national larder. In 1933, as women struggled to feed their families, President Roosevelt reversed long-standing biases toward government-sponsored “food charity.” For the first time in American history, the federal government assumed, for a while, responsibility for feeding its citizens. The effects were widespread. Championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, “home economists” who had long fought to bring science into the kitchen rose to national stature. Tapping into America’s long-standing ambivalence toward culinary enjoyment, they imposed their vision of a sturdy, utilitarian cuisine on the American dinner table. Through the Bureau of Home Economics, these women led a sweeping campaign to instill dietary recommendations, the forerunners of today’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. At the same time, rising food conglomerates introduced packaged and processed foods that gave rise to a new American cuisine based on speed and convenience. This movement toward a homogenized national cuisine sparked a revival of American regional cooking. In the ensuing decades, the tension between local traditions and culinary science has defined our national cuisine—a battle that continues today. A Square Meal examines the impact of economic contraction and environmental disaster on how Americans ate then—and the lessons and insights those experiences may hold for us today. A Square Meal features 25 black-and-white photographs.




Dear Mrs. Roosevelt


Book Description

Impoverished young Americans had no greater champion during the Depression than Eleanor Roosevelt. As First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt used her newspaper columns and radio broadcasts to crusade for expanded federal aid to poor children and teens. She was the most visible spokesperson for the National Youth Administration, the New Deal's central agency for aiding needy youths, and she was adamant in insisting that federal aid to young people be administered without discrimination so that it reached blacks as well as whites, girls as well as boys. This activism made Mrs. Roosevelt a beloved figure among poor teens and children, who between 1933 and 1941 wrote her thousands of letters describing their problems and requesting her help. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt presents nearly 200 of these extraordinary documents to open a window into the lives of the Depression's youngest victims. In their own words, the letter writers confide what it was like to be needy and young during the worst economic crisis in American history. Revealing both the strengths and the limitations of New Deal liberalism, this book depicts an administration concerned and caring enough to elicit such moving appeals for help yet unable to respond in the very personal ways the letter writers hoped.




The Midas Paradox


Book Description

Economic historians have made great progress in unraveling the causes of the Great Depression, but not until Scott Sumner came along has anyone explained the multitude of twists and turns the economy took. In The Midas Paradox: Financial Markets, Government Policy Shocks, and the Great Depression, Sumner offers his magnum opus--the first book to comprehensively explain both monetary and non-monetary causes of that cataclysm. Drawing on financial market data and contemporaneous news stories, Sumner shows that the Great Depression is ultimately a story of incredibly bad policymaking--by central bankers, legislators, and two presidents--especially mistakes related to monetary policy and wage rates. He also shows that macroeconomic thought has long been captive to a false narrative that continues to misguide policymakers in their quixotic quest to promote robust and sustainable economic growth. The Midas Paradox is a landmark treatise that solves mysteries that have long perplexed economic historians, and corrects misconceptions about the true causes, consequences, and cures of macroeconomic instability. Like Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, it is one of those rare books destined to shape all future research on the subject.




What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?


Book Description

Four stories of resilience, mutual aid, and radical rebellion that will transform how we understand the Great Depression Drawing on little-known stories of working people, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? amplifies voices that have been long omitted from standard histories of the Depression era. In four tales, Professor Dana Frank explores how ordinary working people in the US turned to collective action to meet the crisis of the Great Depression and what we can learn from them today. Readers are introduced to * the 7 daring Black women who worked as wet nurses and staged a sit-down strike to demand better pay and an end to racial discrimination * the groups who used mutual aid, cooperatives, eviction protests, and demands for government relief to meet their basic needs * the million Mexican and Mexican American repatriados who were erased from mainstream historical memory, while (often fictitious) white “Dust Bowl migrants” became enshrined * the Black Legion, a white supremacist fascist organization that saw racism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, and fascism as the cure to the Depression While capitalism crashed during the Great Depression, racism did not and was, in fact, wielded by some to blame and oppress their neighbors. Patriarchy persisted, too, undermining the power of social movements and justifying women’s marginalization within them. For other ordinary people, collective action gave them the means to survive and fight against such hostilities. What resulted were powerful new forms of horizontal reciprocity and solidarity that allowed people to provide each other with the bread, beans, and comradeship of daily life. The New Deal, when it arrived, provided vital resources to many, but others were cut off from its full benefits, especially if they were women or people of color. What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? shows us how we might look to the past to think about how we can shape the future of our own failed economy. These lessons can also help us imagine and build movements to challenge such an economy—and to transform the state as a whole—in service to the common good without replicating racism and patriarchy.