Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

One of the big, scary themes of this book is about the shortness of our memories, the narrowness of our perspectives. It's really kind of awful. This book was published in 1970, and Studs Terkel - American genius if there ever was one! - interviews two generations: older people who lived through the Great Depression in the 30s, and some of the Baby Boom 1968ers, who are, in 1970, in their prime, after all. Also, in classic Studs-style, he interviews a huge diversity of people: from the wealthy to the poor, from right-wing nuts to actual card-carrying Communists (they exist(ed)!), from mobsters to religious people to Cesar Chavez (!) and Dorothy Day (!). It's gigantic, mesmerizing. BIG INSPIRATION.

And, again and again, Studs stresses the ways that this diversity equals a huge variance in what people think happened during the Great Depression. You read 100 pages of people starving - STARVING. LET ME EMPHASIZE THAT. I CANNOT EVEN FATHOM. 1930s America = developing country?! - anyway, 100 pages of people starving and scrounging and struggling in the South, in the Midwest and in California, and then you read a couple interviews with some real zingers who “never saw a bread line” and didn't think the Depression was that bad. Amazing. In terms of these people who live with dog-cones on their heads, my favorite might be the “PMA” (positive mental attitude) Big Business guy towards the end of the book. To quote him, “Rrrrrright!”

Then there's the big generational shift, the Great Forgetting. Many of the younger interviewees don't know much about the Depression. It's really jarring: especially after you read about some insane occurrence that must surely be remembered FOREVER, at least in the place it happened, because it's just so insane (I'm thinking of the near-lynching of a judge issuing foreclosures in Le Mars, Iowa, or the struggles for labor rights in Michigan or even just the existence of Alf Landon (the fate of Mitt Romney?)). You read about these amazing events or people and then Studs will have an interview with a 30-year-old taxi driver who's never even HEARD of any of this stuff, and knows “Teddy” but not “Franklin” Roosevelt. My God! Think of everything we're forgetting?!

(That said, hearing from the informed young college people (he finds some SDS types, including one guy who ended up joining the Weathermen!) is just as interesting, and jarring.)

There are so many amazing stories in here; it's the human zoo, the most interesting spectacle of all. Highly recommended, especially if you're into US history or oral histories in general.