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Great Depression



  • The Photographers Who Captured the Great Depression

    Intended as a promotional program for New Deal agricultural programs, the Farm Security Adminstration's sponsorship of Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and other photographers sparked an aesthetic revolution. 



  • When the Government Supported Writers

    by Max Holleran

    "With its reminder that creative labor was once seen—like a strategic reserve of fuel, weapons, or medical supplies—as worthy of federal protection, Republic of Detours mobilizes New Deal history to help us imagine what our society would be like if federal tax dollars supported a reserve army of muralists, poets, and oral historians."



  • F.D.R. Didn’t Just Fix the Economy

    Times columnist Jamelle Bouie draws on the work of historian Eric Rauchway to argue that Franklin Roosevelt envisioned the New Deal as a renewal of core democratic principles that the government should serve the needs of the people and be accountable to them. 



  • Whitewashing the Great Depression (Review)

    Three new books describe the role of administrator Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration in filtering the photographic work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee to emphasize the depression's burden on rural whites. 



  • Once Upon a Time, When America Paid Its Writers

    In Jason Boog’s new book, "The Deep End," he offers colorful and often grim profiles of nine Depression-era writers and connects their stories to the struggles that writers face today. Even before our current economic crisis, it was a depressingly apt comparison.



  • The Great Depression, Coronavirus Style: Crashes, Then and Now

    by Nomi Prins

    Monetary policy responses to the current crisis can't fix either the structural problems that make the economy vulnerable to severe disruption or the virus and public health crisis that underlie that disruption. Governments must choose to take coordinated action on multiple fronts. 



  • The Lessons of the Great Depression

    by Lizabeth Cohen

    The larger lesson the New Deal offers is that recovery is a complex and painful process that requires the participation of many, not directives from a few. And that, ultimately, we’re all in this together.