The Great Depression: A Diary

A “compelling” (New York Times) and personal daily account of the experience of the Great Depression in the mid-west, full of anxieties about the economic future, with powerful echoes for today.

In the early 1920s, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer fresh out of the army. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good—until the stock market crash of 1929. After nearly two years of economic crisis, it was clear that the heady prosperity of the Roaring Twe...