Today when most Americans think of the Great Depression, they imagine desperate hoboes riding the rails in search of work, unemployed men selling pencils to indifferent crowds, bootleggers hustling illegal booze to secrecy-shrouded speakeasies, FDR smiling, or Judy Garland skipping along the yellow brick road. Hard times have become an abstraction. But there was a time when economic suffering was real, when hunger stalked the land, and Americans tried to forget their troubles in movie theaters or in front of a radio. From the stock market crash of October 1929 to Germany's invasion of Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940, the Great Depression blanketed the world economy. Its impact was particularly deep and direct in the United States. This was the era when the federal government became a major player in the national economy and Americans bestowed the responsibility for maintaining full employment and stable prices on Congress and the White House, making the Depression years a major watershed in U.S. history. In more than 500 essays, this book provides a ready reference to those hard times, covering the diplomacy, popular culture, intellectual life, economic problems, public policy issues, and prominent individuals of the era.

Publisher description: Today when most Americans think of the Great Depression, they imagine desperate hoboes riding the rails in search of work, unemployed men selling pencils to indifferent crowds, bootleggers hustling illegal booze to secrecy-shrouded speakeasies, FDR smiling, or Judy Garland skipping along the yellow brick road. Hard times have become an abstraction. But there was a time when economic suffering was real, when hunger stalked the land, and Americans tried to forget their troubles in movie theaters or in front of a radio. From the stock market crash of October 1929 to Germany's invasion of Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940, the Great Depression blanketed the world economy. Its impact was particularly deep and direct in the United States. This was the era when the federal government became a major player in the national economy and Americans bestowed the responsibility for maintaining full employment and stable prices on Congress and the White House, making the Depression years a major watershed in U.S. history. In more than 500 essays, this book provides a ready reference to those hard times, covering the diplomacy, popular culture, intellectual life, economic problems, public policy issues, and prominent individuals of the era.

This is yet another fine historical dictionary from Greenwood. . . . This carefully edited work should prove an asset for all reference collections and as a useful handbook for students of twentieth-century American history. Reference Books Bulletin The Dictionary presents more than 700 short essays on people--George Herman Babe Ruth, Warren Gamaliel Harding, and Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle; legislation--Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1926, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act of 1932; popular culture--baseball, motion pictures, radio, jazz; foreign policy--the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922, the Nine Power Treaty, the League of Nations; politics; social history--women's rights, the Harlem Renaissance, immigration; and culture--the Lost Generation, expatriatism. A detailed chronology and selected bibliography with twenty-three subcategores complete this history of the 1920s.

Today when most Americans think of the Great Depression, they imagine desperate hoboes riding the rails in search of work, unemployed men selling pencils to indifferent crowds, bootleggers hustling illegal booze to secrecy-shrouded speakeasies, FDR smiling, or Judy Garland skipping along the yellow brick road. Hard times have become an abstraction. But there was a time when economic suffering was real, when hunger stalked the land, and Americans tried to forget their troubles in movie theaters or in front of a radio. From the stock market crash of October 1929 to Germany's invasion of Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940, the Great Depression blanketed the world economy. Its impact was particularly deep and direct in the United States. This was the era when the federal government became a major player in the national economy and Americans bestowed the responsibility for maintaining full employment and stable prices on Congress and the White House, making the Depression years a major watershed in U.S. history. In more than 500 essays, this book provides a ready reference to those hard times, covering the diplomacy, popular culture, intellectual life, economic problems, public policy issues, and prominent individuals of the era.

Today, Americans look back nostalgically at the 1950s, an era when television and rock and roll revolutionized popular culture, and Vietnam, race riots, drug abuse, and protest movements were still in the future. With homes in the suburbs, new automobiles, and the latest electrical gadgets, many Americans believed they were the most prosperous people on earth. Yet the era was tainted by the fear of thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union, deepening racial tensions, and discontent with rigid roles for women and the demands of corporate conformity. A sense of rebellion had begun to brew behind the facade. It manifested itself in rock and roll, the budding civil rights movement, and the appearance of a youth culture, eventually exploding in the 1960s. Providing a comprehensive overview, this book includes entries on the prominent people, major events, issues, scandals, ideas, popular culture, and court cases of the decade that gave rise to the tensions of the 1960s.

Today, Americans look back nostalgically at the 1950s, an era when television and rock and roll revolutionized popular culture, and Vietnam, race riots, drug abuse, and protest movements were still in the future. With homes in the suburbs, new automobiles, and the latest electrical gadgets, many Americans believed they were the most prosperous people on earth. Yet the era was tainted by the fear of thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union, deepening racial tensions, and discontent with rigid roles for women and the demands of corporate conformity. A sense of rebellion had begun to brew behind the facade. It manifested itself in rock and roll, the budding civil rights movement, and the appearance of a youth culture, eventually exploding in the 1960s. Providing a comprehensive overview, this book includes entries on the prominent people, major events, issues, scandals, ideas, popular culture, and court cases of the decade that gave rise to the tensions of the 1960s.

Congressional Pathfinders: “First” Members of Congress and How They Shaped American History discusses those men and women whose service in the United States Congress, as improbable as it was, marked a turning point in history. To be the first black American or the first woman to serve in a largely white, male-dominated institution requires a level of moral courage seldom found in ordinary people. To be openly gay, to subscribe to the Muslim faith in a nation often fearful and ignorant of Islam, or to navigate the hallways of power with physical disabilities is to be cognizant of one’s separateness. To be an “other” is to feel the stigma of that difference, and yet to persevere is to forge a path for later generations of others to follow. The service of these courageous men and women forever changed Congress and, by extension, the nation: they truly were congressional pathfinders. Nancy Pelosi, Daniel Inouye, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Ilhan Omar, and Hillary Clinton are among the many figures profiled in Congressional Pathfinders.