Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

This book took me over 9 years to read. It is quite a hefty length at almost 500 pages (with small font), but I'd periodically revisit it whenever I could over the years. But I'd make it a point to finish, because I always recalled it being that good as I was reading it. And I was finally able to finish it recently. One thing is clear by the end: "Hard Times" has to be one of the best books ever written on the subject. It is unlike any book I've ever read. The entire book is made up of short oral histories from individuals who lived through the Great Depression. They come from all walks of life... from Wall Street brokers to farmers, from actors to lawyers, from prison inmates to the wealthy, and from generals to Franklin Roosevelt's inner circle... but at the same time, it's all oral histories from every day people who lived it and did what they could to survive the Depression of the 1930s. They tell about the lessons they learned from a distant and forgotten time that are still relevant today, as it becomes apparent throughout the book that many of the mistakes we're making today are the same mistakes that were made way back then.

Basically a book full of interviews of people who lived through the depression. Includes rich and poor, young and old, people in FDR''s administration, black and white. Gives one a better understanding of this critical time in our nations history and how it has shaped our society.

The late author/journalist Studs Terkel performed a service to history with "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression". The book is a series of many fairly short interviews with people around the country about the Great Depression. The interviews were with ordinary folks, the influential, and the famous. It includes memories of the Depression and people of the following generation who heard about it (or didn't) from family and friends. A very wide perspective.I read the book, but in this case, one might get more out of the audiobook version. Important history!

Stud Terkel's "Hard Times" is a collection of interviews of people who lived during the Great Depression, or were in some way related to people who did.I bought the book expecting to hear stories of people who suffered great deprivation and want during the Depression.But there's actually not that many hard luck stories here.In fact, lots of the people interviewed for this book were quite successful or otherwise got along fairly well during the Depression."Hard Times" reads more like a history of the '30s rather than a riveting account of suffering people. Terkel spends a lot of time talking about the labor movement, for example, hardly a subject unique to any decade. He also talks to people who are just criticizing Roosevelt and the New Deal (ten million remained unemployed all throughout the New Deal until the war; the suicide rate peaked in 1937-38, during Roosevelt's New Deal, not during the Hoover years).I recently read "Tombstone," Yang Jisheng, a hair-raising, eye-witness account of the Chinese famine of 1958-1962. In this page-turner, we read about people reduced to cannibalism in which parents told their starving children to eat their bodies after they are dead.But the people who had it tough in the 1930s don't sound any different from the hard-luck stories you hear in the 21st century. You don't feel as if the Great Depression was any worse than any of the recent recessions (e.g, 1981-1982, 2008-2009).For a really gut-wrenching account of the American Depression, I think Steinbeck's "The Grapes Of Wrath" is far more hard-hitting than "Hard Times".Studs Terkel is from Chicago, so most of the interviewees come from there.Informative and entertaining, but nothing really heart-rending.

I've read several books on the Great Depression...I don't know why it fascinates me, but it does. My grandparents lived through it, and when I found out that my grandpa lost the house he built in Salt Lake City, Utah and most probably the stress of that time caused his early heart attack at age 45 (he lived through it, but it impacted his health)...it caused me to look into the time period. I went after this particular book for some answers when people were debating whether or not this Recession was equal to the Depression. I personally feel when all is said and done, when they look back at this 'Recession' the economists may change their minds and their words, and call this another Depression. Even if they don't, when someone goes back and writes about this time period, they will record problems that people had along the lines not far different of what Terkel found in Hard Times...the only difference will be the way that people handled them...and the lack of government programs with which to 'catch' those people who fall through the cracks. Another difference, is back in the Great Depression...people got up off their fat asses and worked, really worked. They also made do with what they had. And they didn't blame others for their problems (most of them didn't). The rich did what they always do...some of them committed suicide. Some of them made it through with no problems.The ones that impressed me in the book, were usually the very poor, the disenfranchised, the blacks/African-Americans who used music to get out, of course the young men in CCC, the ones that worked hard and coped. This is a wonderful book. You can hear the words and voices of those speaking. If I taught a history class or even English, I'd have this as required reading...it's that good.

This should be a required textbook in every school. I first read it many years ago and it influenced my thinking on social justice, convictions that have remained all my life. Studs Terkel was one of the first to define cox pop recording of the thoughts of real people. A masterpiece.

Gwych!

Great read great writer Good condition

A book everyone needs to read

Brill'