THE DARKEST DECADE
America and the Great Depression, 1929–1941By Frances Millicent Shaw
Length6h 16m
About this audiobook
On October 29, 1929, American markets collapsed in a single day, wiping out fortunes and triggering a decade of suffering. Frances Millicent Shaw traces the full arc of the Great Depression — from the structural causes of the crash through Hoover's failed response, FDR's Hundred Days, the alphabet agencies, and the human cost statistics cannot capture.
The book covers the banking crisis and the Fireside Chat that restored public confidence, Frances Perkins driving Social Security through Congress, the WPA's remarkable cultural output, and the racial inequalities baked into New Deal programmes that evicted 100,000 Black sharecroppers while excluding millions more. It also delivers an honest reckoning: court-packing, the 1937 Roosevelt Recession, and the uncomfortable conclusion that it was World War II — not the New Deal — that finally ended the Depression.
The institutions Roosevelt built — the FDIC, Social Security, the SEC — outlasted the decade. The question he left unresolved has not
Audiobook details
GenreHistorical Fiction, General Fiction, Fairy Tales and Folklore
Length6 hrs 16 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
2Author’s Note
3Prologue: The Party Ends
4PART ONE: THE CRASH AND ITS CAUSES (1929)
5Chapter 1: Black Tuesday — The Stock Market Collapses
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6Chapter 2: The Structural Weaknesses — Why the Economy Failed
7Chapter 3: Hoover's Response — The Limits of Republican Orthodoxy
8Chapter 4: The Banking Crisis — When the Banks Failed
9PART TWO: THE DEPRESSION DEEPENS (1930–1932)
10Chapter 5: Unemployment and Breadlines — The Human Cost
11Chapter 6: The Dust Bowl — Drought, Displacement, and the Okies
12Chapter 7: Hoovervilles — Shanty Towns and Broken Dreams
13Chapter 8: The Bonus Army — Veterans March on Washington
14PART THREE: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL (1933–1935)
15Chapter 9: The Hundred Days — Roosevelt's Emergency Response
16Chapter 10: The First New Deal — Relief, Recovery, and Reform
17Chapter 11: The Second New Deal — Social Security and the Wagner Act
18Chapter 12: Opposition to the New Deal — Business, Courts, and the Left
19PART FOUR: NEW DEAL AMERICA (1933–1939)
20Chapter 13: The CCC and PWA — Putting America to Work
21Chapter 14: The TVA — Government Power and Regional Development
22Chapter 15: The New Deal and Race — Promises and Limits
23Chapter 16: Cultural Depression — Art, Literature, and the WPA
24PART FIVE: THE DEPRESSION'S HUMAN STORIES (1930–1940)
25Chapter 17: Women and the Depression — Gender, Work, and Survival
26Chapter 18: The Midwestern Exiles — From Oklahoma to California
27Chapter 19: Labor Rising — The CIO and the Sit-Down Strikes
28Chapter 20: Voices of the Depression — Photographers, Writers, and Radio
29PART SIX: END AND LEGACY
30Chapter 21: Court-Packing and the Conservative Turn — 1937
31Chapter 22: The Roosevelt Recession — The Limits of New Deal Economics
32Chapter 23: The Depression Ends — World War II and Economic Recovery
33Chapter 24: The New Deal Legacy — What It Changed and What It Didn't
34Epilogue: What the Depression Made
35Acknowledgments
36Selected Bibliography
37About the Author
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