What Was the Great Depression?

by Janet B. Pascal

First published 2015

The Great Depression shattered American lives starting with Black Tuesday on October 29, 1929. Janet Pascal traces how the stock market crash sent the nation's financial system into freefall. She explains how unemployment soared to one in three Americans by the early 1930s. Families lost everything and moved into makeshift settlements they called Hoovervilles after President Herbert Hoover. Banks failed across the country by 1933. Pascal uses 80 illustrations to show how this economic catastrophe became the most severe and far-reaching disaster in American history. The book delivers a clear account of how ordinary people survived when their world fell apart.

Genres: history, 20th-century, economics, non-fiction, american-history

Vibes: historical, informative, thought-provoking

Tropes: historical-non-fiction

Setting: America, United States

Period: 1929, 1930s

112 pages · Paperback · Penguin Workshop

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