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Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

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This book is a compilation of oral recountings of the Great Depression of the 20th Century, taken by Studs Terkel. The book can be regarded as an excellent primary source of information from a historical point of view. These are anecdotes from people ranging from sharecroppers on up to highly placed executives, politicians, and professionals. Terkel leaves no stone unturned, as these stories (grouped by occupation and social stratum) show how the Depression affected people in all walks of life in the United States.

No secondary source is going to prove as truthful as the stories themselves. No high-flying armchair analysis by a detached political commentator, PhD or windbag is going to give you the true flavor of what our country went through after October, 1929.

We are in the midst of an economic downturn that has 800,000 American citizens without unemployment insurance, a looming health crisis among unemployed members of the middle class, and a war on the horizon. If you want to be prepared and to understand the ramifications of this situation, I urge you to not only read this book cover to cover, but also to go out and find people who lived through this time and listen to their stories. Go to your grandparents, parents, elderly relatives, the old guy on the porch across the street, the local senior centers. Ask them to talk.

Understanding history helps us understand the future.

Studs Terkel's book is a recounting of the past, but is also a story of our coming future.

Read it!

Studs Terkel interviewed dozens of people for his oral history, "Hard Times." What you get is a very good overall picture of the Great Depression in America.

Terkel interviewed the rich, gangsters, southern sharecroppers, Oakies and Arkies, the rural poor, young and old (in the 1930's as well as in the 1960's when he was interviewing people.) The perceptions of the Depression by each is as individual and as varied as America itself. What struck me most, however was the inequitability of the Depression.

When I thought of the "Depression" images of soup lines and "Hoovervilles" sprang to mind. And yes, many remembered those as well. But there were several interviewees who never saw a bread line, a shanty town, or felt the sting of economic crash. To my suprise, there were even a few individuals who became RICH as a result of the Depression.

Another interesting aspect of the book (which was totally unexpected) was the reflection of the "present" while looking back at the Deperession. Terkel assembled the book in the late 1960's; as you may imagine, the social turbulence and youth culture of the day was often brought up in the various interviews ... fascinating.

All in all an interesting and engaging read - if nothing else, it certainly puts things in perspective relative to the "hard times" the nation faced in the 1930's. The book is not for everyone, but I do recommend it.

Studs Terkel's "Hard Times" offers an excellent look into the 1930s from a multitude of Americans, including: the young/old, rich/poor, and new immigrant/old stock Americans were all coved in "Hard Times". Their stories will change you and your understanding of the Great Depression will be enhanced from what you learn from these readings.

Interestingly, the interviews were conducted in the late 1960s, so you also have a comparative oral history of the 1960s as well.

However, Stud Terkel's book would be greatly enhanced if he had included an index and a bibliography for interesting and important subjects. Maybe he will include an index and a bibliography in the next edition.

Overall, an excellent book!

Studs Terkel has assembled a great collection of oral histories from a pivotal period in the twentieth century. Don't look here for a detailed analysis of the economics of one of this country's worst downturns. Instead, one should read this to get a glimpse of the despair that seemed to capture nearly everyone in its grasp while no one seemed to know what was causing it nor how to fix it.

There are a lot of terrific stories in this book, covering everything from union strikers, farmers to business men and college students. This book is a must-have for any serious student of this era.

This is the first book I've read on America's experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s. My parents and other relatives and some of my older friends went through it. One man whom I knew, frequently brought it up and with great bitterness and anger, often directing that anger to others around him - especially those who were younger and didn't go through it - while others had little or nothing to say and seemed to brush it aside. Most though, seem to just want to forget it.

One fine elderly woman - my grandmother - was incredibly generous and loving to others the rest of her life, because of living through it. It still stuns me to see how these people with similar experiences could react so differently so many years later.

The author, being a Chicago man, places a lot of emphasis on the Depression as it hit that city and its citizens. Also he has a definite Left-oriented sort of outlook - and after reading this book it becomes entirely understandable. He frequently brings up the possibilities of revolution during the 1930s when so many ordinary and poor people lost just about everything. But the message comes through clearly that the Americans of those years firstly still had respect for law and order and the government, and secondly they had a kind of optimism or set of positive 'it will pass' illusions that kept them going.

Reading how people were treated back then, it is nonetheless a wonder that they really didn't rise up and overthrow the entire capitalist system. If a similar Depression occurred today, it would happen. And that is also the reflection of many voices in this book.

I highly recommend this book to everyone. More than anything else, it taught me to understand more clearly how and why different generational values and perceptions were formed from that period - and how they have come to impact succeeding generations.

I had to read Studs Terkel's "Hard Times" for school. At first it seemed confusing and long b/c there where no main characters and it was 462 pages. I was surprised to sincerely enjoy it. It was a captivating book with many fascinating stories. I liked the way the book shows you all aspects of the Depression from people with all different lifestyles.

HARD TIMES is moving oral history about the Great Depression of the 1930's from people who lived through it. A majority of the interviewees are Chicagoans, who on balance tend to reinforce the author's liberal views. We hear from former jobless, hoboes, people who had work, the rich, even a gangster. We read varied opinions on President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which eased (but didn't end) the hard times before later evolving into the welfare state. Imagine times so difficult that thousands hopped freight trains and traveled long distances in an often-fruitless search for a job - any job. Some interviewees worked for the WPA, a New Deal program that put millions of unemployed men (including my grandfather) to work repairing sidewalks and building structures like post offices and Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. HARD TIMES helps readers understand why so many of our grandparents kept talking about the Depression long after it had ended.

Some say that Studs Terkel isn't an author, but merely a good listener with a tape recorder. Either way, the result is a series of very readable oral histories such as HARD TIMES, THE GOOD WAR, DIVISION STREET, WORKING, etc.

This is the second book by Terkel I've read, the other being his superlative "The Good War". Like that book, it is a joy to read, and it was often hard to put down. He usually opens his interviews with just enough exposition to set up a scene, and then lets his subjects talk. And, do they! The personalities of each come through such that you feel as if you're sharing the room with them, an experience that is the more poignant for the realization that most of the people in this book are long-dead, taking their stories with them.

Nonetheless, the book has its weaknesses. Though the Great Depression is by definition an extremely broad subject, I never felt quite like I was getting a good "slice of life" of the times. For instance, there seem to be a disproportionate number of interviews with former Communists and socalists; though their movement was powerful during the Thirties, one may get the idea that they were more common than they actually were--especially since, as one reviewer noted, much of the book is set in and around Chicago. On the whole, it's a less gripping text than "The Good War"; reading that book felt like an awakening, while this one will reveal little to those with a working knowledge of the Depression-era U.S.

All that said, I'm glad I read it, and still recommend it for anyone interested in this complex and unsettling period of American history.

History is best talked about, not read. You can read scores of books about the depression, get your dates and figures right, but until you read first hand accounts you can never truly understand the times.

As a twenty-something in this new millenia, the depression has been shrowded in mystery for me, my parents got only bits and pieces from theirs, and I got even less from them. This book fills in the pieces, helps me understand an era I know very little about, and allows me to understand how that era shaped my parents, and myself.

Mr. Terkel has done us all a great favor with his books, and this one is on the top of my list.

"Hard Times" by Studs Terkel

462 pages

Short review: Excellent book. I credit it with softening somewhat my attitude towards FDR's dealing with the Great Depression. I'm still no great fan of his, but, I can see and respect the many people in this book who undoubtedly were.
When people were talking about this book and "oral history", I kind of figured out it was a bunch of people remembering the Great Depression. Both from personal experience and from hand-me-down anecdotes from parents and grandparents. That it is.
However, it is also a lot more.
I was surprised, once I get my curious mitts on it, on several issues:
1) how many people were actually involved. Terkel interviewed hundreds and hundreds of folk. Of this vast amount of material, he whittled it down to just over one hundred and sixty unique individuals. These range across all social strata, and -in outlook and political sympathies- cover the broad political spectrum. That makes it a sort of unique "historical time capsule".
2) Terkel wrote very little in this book; a one-liner here, a question there, a short paragraph somewhere else by way of explanation. Putting all his scattered comments and questions together, he still probably wrote less than 20 pages out of the 462. His skill, or genius if you like, was the way he gently prodded people here and there, and then wisely shut up and let them do the talking. He then arranged the material very interestingly. I quote some examples further below.
3) The book radiates humanity. Warmth. Compassion, idealism, sincerity. It is full of people who tried. Tried hard. And often failed.
It is uniquely inspiring.
4) The book contains a sinister background noise. Was the Great Depression a man made thing? Who was at fault? Could it have been prevented, ameliorated? Nobody is really sure. Were people used and abused? Humiliated? Yes. Was there bitterness and great anger, hatred even? Yes. Did everybody see that? No. Did everybody suffer? No, many prospered.
5) If, like me, you are interested in FDR, and what kind of person he really was, saviour or devil incarnate, or something in between, then you will find many tantalizing glimpses of him in this book. Some speakers hated him, others loved him. Of his many public programs, some people curse them as wasteful and frivolous, and mere ploys and bribes to ensure political re-election.
Others however are clearly sincerely grateful -emotional- to this day for those Federal initiatives, and imply that without them, they might have starved.
6) If, like me, you are interested in the class struggle, and the emergence of the Trade unions from reviled rabble to formidable labour movements, and if, like me you are suspicious that there are those (then and now) who seek to fan the flames of class divisions for their own selfish ends, then you will find much to ponder. The Unions then and now are not all good, and not all bad. It's a lot more complicated. Shades of gray...

Long review:
If you are looking for a technical, theoretical, economic treatise of the causes of the Great Depression, then (heavens!) don't buy this book. Check out some of my other reviews for that.
This is a wandering, circuitous, snap shot in time of many different themes. It is a cacophony. But therein lies a magnificent, touching charm...
I'll give you just a few examples amongst a great many.
Consider Ed Paulsen, who was 14 in 1926. Despite the hardship, on page 31 he says:
"We weren't greatly agitated in terms of society. Ours was a bewilderment, not an anger. Not a sense of being particularly put upon. We weren't talking revolution; we were talking jobs..."
Mary Owsley (p. 46) "My husband was very bitter. That's just puttin' it mild. He was an intelligent man. He couldn't see why as wealthy a country as this is, that there was any sense in so many people starving to death, when so much of it, wheat and everything else, was being poured into the Ocean."
Country Joe McDonald (p.52) "I travel around and talk to some of the Mexican migrant workers. In a way, they seem closer to each other than most well-off middle-class people. Their impoverished condition somehow made them very real people. It's hard to be phony when you haven't got anything. I mean when you're really down and out. I think the Depression had some kind of human qualities with it that we lack now."
William Benton (p.69) "In 1929, most of your Wall Street manipulators called it The New Era. They felt it was the start of a perpetual boom that would carry us on and on forever to new plateaus."
Ruby Bates (p.92) "Roosevelt touched the temper of the black community..... He had tremendous support through his wife... The WPA and other projects introduced black people to handicrafts and trades. It gave Negroes a chance to have an office to work out of with a typewriter..."
Yose Yglesias (p. 111) "People would put off government aid as long as possible. Aunt Lila and her husband were the first in our family, and the last, to go on the WPA. This was considered a terrible tragedy, because it was charity. You did not mention it to them."
Sally Rand (p.174) "I truly believe we shall have another Depression. I think people will just go out and take what they need. I don't think there will be any more people queuing up on bread lines waiting to be fed by charity, God damn it......
The middle class look upon the deprived smugly: the poor we'll have with us always. Oh yeah?"
Aaron Barkham (p.204) "The county sheriff had a hundred strike breakers. They were called deputies. The company paid him ten cents a ton on all the coal carried down the river, to keep the union out."

This book gave me many vivid mental pictures. They continually leap from the pages, and made me realize just how complex the truth of those times really is. There are many shades of gray to try and understand. Politically, nothing was black and white. I think it leaves me with more compassion for the ordinary people and some of the politicians of the Great Depression. It's too easy to totally condemn FDR and the WPA, from the comfort of the twenty first century. But something had to be done... Was it perfect? No. Was it a complete failure? No. Somewhere in the middle lies the answer, and, more importantly, the crucial lessons for our generation, and the current fiercely debated Obama New Deal. I don't envy him his job...

Christopher Lasch (p.340) put into words an impression I've been getting myself. He says:
"To talk in retrospect is to do so coldly, and,in a sense, to falsify what people experienced in the Thirties. While one can say, in the relative comfort of the sixties, that the New Deal measures were palliatives, they were more than that to the people living in the Thirties. They were, in many cases, matters of life and death."

For me, an excellent, wonderfully challenging book. One of the best I've read in the last few years. I think it's made my views a bit more balanced. I'm neither Democrat or Republican. What am I?
Oh dear. Guess I'd better go read a whole lot more books and see if I can find out.
I'm open to suggestions...