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Product Details

From Publishers Weekly
What were your grandparents doing in the 1920s and '30s? How did they spend their days and how were they affected by the popular culture? What were their work and domestic lives like? These are the questions Kyvig, a Bancroft Prize winner for Explicit and Authentic Acts and Northern Illinois University history professor, explores probingly in his new study. Kyvig covers everything from the development of the small pick-up truck to the spread of country and western music and shifting practices in religion and health care. He delineates how the mass production of cars changed people's buying habits with the introduction of credit, and how battery-powered radios meant rural folks could share the new mass culture with city dwellers. Kyvig also documents the massive impact—most of it negative—of Prohibition, a sign of the federal government's growing impact on people's lives, an impact greatly heightened by the New Deal. In the midst of his quite lucid and readable analysis, the author also touches on race, gender, class and the differences between rural and urban environments. In sum, Kyvig's book represents a penetrating information-packed portrait of Main Street, USA, during tumultuous times. 53 b&w photos.
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Review
...An excellent popular approach to an important subject by a well respected historian. -- G. Wesley Johnson, Brigham Young University

Kyvig regularly comes up with illuminating details…and new ways of thinking about familiar subjects…. This is an unusually satisfying book. -- Atlantic Monthly

Kyvig--a respected historian…writes in an agreeably lucid style…about subjects that should be of immediate interest to all readers… -- Washington Post

The details of work life, domestic life, and leisure activities make engrossing reading...on a level we can all understand. -- Walla Walla Union Bulletin

This enjoyable read brings the period clearly into focus. -- Forbes.com

Virtually encyclopedic in its coverage of a vast array of topics, yet it manages to be readable and engaging. -- Ronald E. Butchart in University of Georgia

…A happy marriage of political and social history. -- William E. Leuchtenburg, Professor Emeritus of History, UNC Chapel Hill

…An excellent social history which examines how ‘ordinary people’ reacted to...massive changes. -- Roger Daniels, University of Cincinnati

…Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the origins of contemporary America. -- William L. O'Neill

…Stands strong on a bedrock of solid research and clear writing. Highly recommended… -- Library Journal

Customer Reviews

Just What I Was Looking For
There are many books out there about the Depression years, but they usually only give a VERY brief introduction to the era, then begin more or less in October of 1929, and are mostly historical rather than sociological. This author realized the importance to the reader of understanding the decade leading up to the Crash and the Depression, as well as learning about day-to-day life as it was lived by average Americans in order to reach a full understanding of what America was like during this time. This is EXACTLY the approach I was looking for and I was very pleased, indeed, by this volume. It is well-researched and well-written, and relates information I have had trouble finding elsewhere. I highly recommend it for a broad range of ages.

A fast read, like an 8th grade social studies text
This was a great read. I like how the author highlighted the social and the economic and the cultural changes that took place during these formative years in 20th century America. You read about the genius, yet uncompromising Henry Ford, who designed the Model T, and later the Model A, but failed in his bid to create a winning farm tractor (they kept tipping over backward).

You will also read about the greed and the heavy loans that banks gave out that led to the 1929 stock market crash. But you will also read about FDR's tremendous reforms: The creation of Social Security, the SEC, the FDIC, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was later struck down by the Supreme Court, but reintroduced in a different incarnation based on taxes), TVA, and many others.

I enjoyed reading about how American life changed with the advent of electric light in homes, which led people to read more. The chapters on marriage, divorce, and sexuality were also interesting.

This is a great book about the roaring Twenties and the depressing Thirties.

Learning from the first Great Depression (is GDII next?)
If we don't learn from the past....

This book is well-written: it is not a dry, plodding description of the Great Depression of the 30's and the decades before and after. The gaiety of the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition notwithstanding, is well-described, to the extent one can almost step into the post-WWI exhilaration. Only to be followed by financial disaster.

Then the crash of the stock market, explained so that even I, a non-financial-investments person, can comprehend the cause and effects. The daily life, which was what I initially sought to understand, was thoroughly examined from the popular attendance of the new talkies to the government programs initiated to alleviate the dire circumstances of so many people.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning from the past: a past that may resemble our future!