<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be fooled by the subtitle!
Review: . When I saw this book and read the dustjacket notes I assumed it would be what the title suggested: a "narrative" history of the Great Depression, told primarily through the experiences of persons who lived through it. I was sorely disappointed. Make no mistake -- the book contains a wealth of well-researched data quite valuable to the study of the depression, but written like a college text, with appropriate footnotes, instead of as a literary exercise such as David McCullough's TRUMAN. Nothing wrong with that, but the book should be marketed and reviewed as an academic effort rather than as a "narrative history."
Rating:
Summary: Don't be fooled by the subtitle!
Review: . When I saw this book and read the dustjacket notes I assumed it would be what the title suggested: a "narrative" history of the Great Depression, told primarily through the experiences of persons who lived through it. I was sorely disappointed. Make no mistake -- the book contains a wealth of well-researched data quite valuable to the study of the depression, but written like a college text, with appropriate footnotes, instead of as a literary exercise such as David McCullough's TRUMAN. Nothing wrong with that, but the book should be marketed and reviewed as an academic effort rather than as a "narrative history."
Rating:
Summary: Superficial, Intellectually Lightweight Depression Review
Review: One will not learn the cause of the Great Depression from Watkin's book (for that read "Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin) or learn of the Wall Street greed factor (for that read Sy Harding's "Riding the Bear") that contributed so much to the Depression's birth. This IS a rather interesting collection of anecdotes/stories that vividly paint how the Depression was, just don't pay full price or you'll regret it.
Unfortunately, we are headed for another Depression this decade as the crushing amounts of personal/corporate/government debt
ruin the employment and investment scenes.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty weak
Review: This should be my type of book: Serious history written for the general reader. The book provides statistics, anecdotes, political history, union history, Dust Bowl history, and it discusses the alphabet soup of Depression programs and the 1929 crash. Somehow all of this never comes into focus. There isn't a clear narrative. For example, we don't learn that the farm economy was depressed throughout the 1920's until page 340 or so--after Watkins had already discussed the causes of the Depression and after another section that took us up to the end of the thirties. Watkins could do some fact checking as well. He says that the 1935 Social Security Act "did establish an unemployment and disability insurance program financed by a tax on employers--to be collected by the states, then distributed as unemployment or disability payments to those who qualified under state-established standards." The SSA did establish the unemployment insurance program, but a similar disability insurance program has never been created. It wasn't for lack of trying. Senator Wagner, who introduced the SSA in the Senate in 1935, introduced a bill to establish a Federal-State disability program in 1939, but he didn't succeed in seeing it enacted. (As of today only California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island have disability insurance programs which pay benefits to workers who cannot work due to a non-work related disability.) Watkins also claims that FDR's 1936 electoral victory "was greater than in any election since that of James Madison in 1820". James Monroe won the 1820 election. But Watkins greatest failure is that he does not place many events in context. The Great Depression created the world we live in today - the Federal legislation on banking, securities, unemployment insurance, welfare, social security are treated with less emphasis than all the programs that came in and went in the Depression (the WPA, CCC, NRA). Yes, we should pay witness to those who lived through the Depression, but we should also pay witness to the world they created.
Rating:
Summary: Superficial, Intellectually Lightweight Depression Review
Review: We live in an era in which politicians of both major parties try to outdo each other in their denunciations of government. President Reagan provided the verbal apotheosis of this anti-goverrnmental attitude, and his accolyte, George W. Bush, a political insider if there ever was one, continues the cynical and insidious calculated assault on the nature of government and its relationship with the people. Many Americans today feel a profound alienation from government and truly believe their interests are contradictory of those of government. T. H. Watkins, author of the elegant, compelling and profound history of the Great Depression, "The Hungry Years" must wince every time he hears these voices. Professor Watkins knows of another time in our past, one of great social dislocation and mass suffering; one where men and women yearned for work and from work, hope; one where the threads which bound us together as a nation were slowly, but steadily, fraying. His remarkably beautiful and tremendously affecting work stands as a reminder that there was a time in our not too distant past where one man, crippled and conflicted himself, sought to alleviate that suffering in a program which would redefine a citizen's relationship with his or her national government. "The Hungry Years" above all serves as a philosophical keystone that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal sought to change governmental indifference into governmental action, attempted to create a symbiotic and caring relationship between the common person and government, and served to remind all Americans that activism in the name of justice and dignity is a pivotal characteristic in our national character. Watkins clearly analyzes the myriad of dreams, laws, acts, decisions and outcomes of the New Deal, and he is frank in discussing shortfalls and disappointments. Underlying the discussion, however, is his unabashed admiration for the tenor of the early years of FDR's adminstration. "For a time, millions of Americans -- white, black, and brown, male and female, urban and rural, young and old, white-collar and blue-collar -- had been given a sense of their own worth and power, the notion that by joining together they could control at least some portion of their lives, however imperfectly, however briefly." This admirable volume rings with authenticity, primarily because the author so assiduously assembled anecdotes and interviews with those directly affected by the Great Depression. Human voices, laden with sadness and anger, ringing with rage at loss and suffering and growling with the ominous timbre of class war, appear on every page. These voices, magnificently interstitched with careful research (even his footnotes are written gracefully), control the book and serve to focus our attention on the human consequences of the era. Each chapter could stand on its own, but I found his discussion of artists, actors and writers in the New Deal absolutely rivetting, as were his astounding accounts of the impact of natural disaster on the geographic and emotional landscape of the land. "The Hungry Years" will serve as an important example that history can read as literature and move readers in the same way as art. Satisfying intellectually and emotionally, "The Hungry Years" inspires historical imagination and furnishes us with a vision of a society not at odds with government, but aligned with a President who perceived that government's most serious and honored obligation is to alleviate suffering.
Rating: 
Summary: skilled narrative history at its lyrical, absorbing best
Review: We live in an era in which politicians of both major parties try to outdo each other in their denunciations of government. President Reagan provided the verbal apotheosis of this anti-goverrnmental attitude, and his accolyte, George W. Bush, a political insider if there ever was one, continues the cynical and insidious calculated assault on the nature of government and its relationship with the people. Many Americans today feel a profound alienation from government and truly believe their interests are contradictory of those of government. T. H. Watkins, author of the elegant, compelling and profound history of the Great Depression, "The Hungry Years" must wince every time he hears these voices. Professor Watkins knows of another time in our past, one of great social dislocation and mass suffering; one where men and women yearned for work and from work, hope; one where the threads which bound us together as a nation were slowly, but steadily, fraying. His remarkably beautiful and tremendously affecting work stands as a reminder that there was a time in our not too distant past where one man, crippled and conflicted himself, sought to alleviate that suffering in a program which would redefine a citizen's relationship with his or her national government. "The Hungry Years" above all serves as a philosophical keystone that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal sought to change governmental indifference into governmental action, attempted to create a symbiotic and caring relationship between the common person and government, and served to remind all Americans that activism in the name of justice and dignity is a pivotal characteristic in our national character. Watkins clearly analyzes the myriad of dreams, laws, acts, decisions and outcomes of the New Deal, and he is frank in discussing shortfalls and disappointments. Underlying the discussion, however, is his unabashed admiration for the tenor of the early years of FDR's adminstration. "For a time, millions of Americans -- white, black, and brown, male and female, urban and rural, young and old, white-collar and blue-collar -- had been given a sense of their own worth and power, the notion that by joining together they could control at least some portion of their lives, however imperfectly, however briefly." This admirable volume rings with authenticity, primarily because the author so assiduously assembled anecdotes and interviews with those directly affected by the Great Depression. Human voices, laden with sadness and anger, ringing with rage at loss and suffering and growling with the ominous timbre of class war, appear on every page. These voices, magnificently interstitched with careful research (even his footnotes are written gracefully), control the book and serve to focus our attention on the human consequences of the era. Each chapter could stand on its own, but I found his discussion of artists, actors and writers in the New Deal absolutely rivetting, as were his astounding accounts of the impact of natural disaster on the geographic and emotional landscape of the land. "The Hungry Years" will serve as an important example that history can read as literature and move readers in the same way as art. Satisfying intellectually and emotionally, "The Hungry Years" inspires historical imagination and furnishes us with a vision of a society not at odds with government, but aligned with a President who perceived that government's most serious and honored obligation is to alleviate suffering.
<< 1 >>
|
