The Great Depression, Then and Now

Professor Brinkley has written extensively on the Depression era and the evolution of liberal social and economic policies:

The End Of Reform: New Deal Liberalism In Recession And War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Liberalism and Its Discontents. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. New Deal’s legacy through the rest of the 20th century.

“The New Deal Experiments.” Essay in The Achievement Of American Liberalism: The New Deal And Its Legacies, ed. William H. Chafe. New York: Columbia University Press, c2003.

“The New Deal in American Scholarship.” Essay in The State Of U.S. History, ed. Melvyn Stokes. Oxford, UK ; New York: Berg, 2002.

Voices of protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Here are some good biographies of Franklin Roosevelt:

Davis, Kenneth S. F.D.R., The New York Years, 1928-1933; FDR, The New Deal Years, 1933-1937; and FDR, Into The Storm, 1937-1940. New York, N.Y.: Random House, c1985, 1986, and 1993. The volumes in Davis’s multi-volume biography dealing with the Depression years.

Freidel, Frank Burt. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous With Destiny. Boston: Little Brown, c1990. Good one volume study.

McElvaine, Robert S. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002. Part of the “American Presidents Reference Series.” Useful in the classroom.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957-1960. 3 vols. It may be old, but it’s still very, very good.

Smith, Jean Edward. FDR. New York: Random House, c2007. Good one volume work.

Winkler, Allan M. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the making of modern America. New York: Pearson/Longman, c2006. Part of the Library of American Biography. Brief study.

For the banking crisis and stock market crash, see my general resources suggestions. Add this book on the New Deal’s banking policies:

Burns, Helen M. The American Banking Community And New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933-1935. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1974.

These books take a look at Roosevelt’s economic policies and the influence of the work of John Maynard Keynes:

Barber, William J. Designs Within Disorder: Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Economists, And The Shaping Of American Economic Policy, 1933-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Romasco, Albert U. The Politics Of Recovery: Roosevelt's New Deal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Rosen, Elliot A. Roosevelt, The Great Depression, And The Economics Of Recovery. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005.

Rosenof, Theodore. Economics In The Long Run: New Deal Theorists And Their
Legacies, 1933-1993. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1997. Useful for following the impact of New Deal economics on later decades.

My suggestions for additional resources for the Works Progress Administration appear with Nick Taylor’s essay in this issue.