The Great Depression: A Diary |  | Author: Benjamin Roth
Creators: James Ledbetter, Daniel B. Roth
Publisher: PublicAffairs
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 20874
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st ed
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 158648799X
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.9730917
EAN: 9781586487997
ASIN: 158648799X
Publication Date: October 13, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781586487997 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
This title offers a first-person diary account of living through the Great Depression, with haunting parallels to our own time. Benjamin Roth was born in New York City in 1894. When the stock market crashed in 1929, he had been practicing law for approximately ten years, largely representing local businesses. After nearly two years, he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, and he began writing down his impressions in a diary that he maintained intermittently until he died in 1978. Roth's words from that unique time seem to speak directly to readers today. His perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to our own era. Like many of us, Roth struggles both to understand and to educate himself about what was going on around him. He is sceptical of big government, yet ultimately won over by FDR's New Deal. This collection of his diary entries, edited by James Ledbetter, editor of Slate's "The Big Money," reveals another side of the Great Depression - one lived through by ordinary, middle-class folks, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future. It is highly topical - and timely. The greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression has many Americans wondering what things were like as the Great Depression unfolded and people did not yet know how or when it would end. It is clear-eyed, readable - and eerily familiar. In short, concise, and thoughtful entries, Roth chronicles the most telling moments of the Great Depression, from the drop in the price of movie tickets to Hoover's failed free-market solutions to the rise in foreclosures in his hometown and how to benefit from 'bargains' at the much-diminished stock exchange. It is published one-year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros sent the world markets on a deep downward slide, and around the 80th anniversary of 'Black Tuesday'. It is presented in a beautiful package - endpapers using original diary entries, period photos throughout, and gorgeous interior design.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 Visceral March 6, 2010
Gary Fong (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've always wondered why people who emerged from the Great Depression are so different than my generation (boomer). They are more nervous, cautious, a bit fearful, but way more sensible than the carefree, debt-ridden generations that were born after the depression ended. When someone says, "my folks lived through the depression" you know what they're like. Forever changed, savers, and never crazy with investments.
So the chance to read a nunc-pro-tunc account of what daily life was like to a person living in the Great Depression, it's a fantastic historical opportunity to enter a time capsule with such granularity and texture that you feel like you are there.
But what's haunting is the similarities of life then to life today. Phantom ups and downs so the unaware public is being convinced that the worst is over, when in fact, history showed that it was only going to get worse. The government bailouts, and the fear of inflation. In many ways reading this book is like reading today's papers.
Scary and enlightening - it's a great piece of american history.
Fantastic perspective, Great read January 28, 2010
Sheltonite (CT United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
My favorite book is still David M Kennedy's Freedom From Fear. I have a great interest in the subject and have read much on the Great Depression. The view from this young, then older, lawyer in a once thriving, then despondent city, is amazing. I ask my older relatives about this era and I get nothing of the flavor of Mr. Roth. I enjoyed it highly.
i re-read this book practically every day January 22, 2010
Elaine Good (Boca Raton,FLUSA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
read this book if you want to fathom what is going on today - it gives a extremely useful perspective on today
 Then and Now January 19, 2010
Erin Nass (Thompson, OH)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The stock market sinks to all time levels. Banks, after years of approving questionable loans, collapse under the burden of too many defaulted mortgages. The nation is in foreclosure and eventually the banks begin to close. Unemployment rises at alarming rates. Entire industries fall into receivership and the dollar is devalued. The economies of the other nations in the world market begin to mirror the United States. The voters respond by voting a very unpopular Republican out of office and vote in a Democrat who promises change.
The year is not 2008. It's the 1930s and Benjamin Roth, a young conservative attorney in Youngstown, Ohio, begins to keep a diary chronicling the Great Depression. Through Roth's eyes the reader gets a bird's eye view of the Depression unfolding and the consequences on the national and local levels. Every entry is an education. Roth spends the rest of his life reading about economics and evaluating the events of the 1930s with the goal to determine what caused this devastation and how to prevent it from ever happening again.
The Great Depression, A Diary is an education in global economics and fiscal responsibility. Through this book, readers gain insight into what happened 90 years ago and what is happening in our country today. Benjamin Roth proves what every high school history teacher has been saying for years, "Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it."
Comparative reading November 10, 2009
Busy reader (Troy, MI USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
As a child of the Depression I found The Great Depression: a Diary very interesting and informative. My father was not a professional person and I am sure he did not have any stocks, but the traumatic events that occurred happened to everyone. There are so many similarities to todays events: bank closings, credit problems, the closing of so very many businesses and the institution of so many programs to save jobs and the economy and very few of them having the stimulus needed. I also found it interesting to track the professional person as I have worked for lawyers and they seem to suffer immediately from a downturn in the economy. Apparently it was the same many years ago. A very good read and I would recommend it to anyone who lived through the great depression or would like a comparison of the present situation and the dark days long ago.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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