We know a great deal about what went on in the White House and at the federal level to combat the gravest economic crisis in the nation's history; we know much less about what it was like at the grass roots, in cities, towns, and communities throughout the country. Hitting Home is absorbing reading because it describes the problems of the depression on a scale we can all comprehend. Mr. Sternsher has selected twelve historical articles which fill in the local picture in compelling detail--from New York's Harlem to Orange County, California; from Minneapolis to the Oklahoma Indians. The reader...

In the suffering and poverty of the Great Depression, American morale received a shock as powerful as the economic collapse. Many Americans who had nurtured a deep faith in democracy, hard work, and a free economy suddenly found themselves questioning their system. Others feared that in combating the Depression, democracy might give way to the totalitarianism of the left or right. In Hope Restored, Bernard Sternsher has assembled fourteen writings by historians that show how, even though the New Deal s initiatives did not always work, FDR s program was a psychological and political success....

Not all women were victims of the gravest economic crisis in the nation's history. Many were talented fighters who helped to shape the response to the expression by government and labor, in public and private arenas. Sixteen of their stories--pieces of autobiography--have been gathered in this striking book. The women include Mary Simkhovitch and Lillian Wald, influential settlement leaders; Eleanor Roosevelt; Dorothy Day and Margaret Bourke-White, journalists who championed the poor and oppressed; Frances Perkins, Mary Anderson, Louise Armstrong, and Hallie Flanagan, who helped forge New...