James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner

From the author of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her husband, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced—the Great Depression—and how it transformed America’s culinary culture.

The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country’s political and social landscape, forever changed the way

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During the Great Depression, aspiring reporter Kit Kittredge uncovers a mystery surrounding a secret room in the rundown mansion owned by elderly Miss Mundis.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal began as a program of short-term emergency relief measures and evolved into a truly transformative concept of the federal government's role in Americans' lives. More than an economic recovery plan, it was a reordering of the political system that continues to define America to this day. With this book, writer Michael Hiltzik offers fresh insights into this inflection point in the American experience. He shows how Roosevelt,...

"Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's novel is about one woman--and a nation--struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She'd come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into...

"Marc Favreau documents the Great Depression--a time when Americans from all walks of life fell victim to poverty, insecurity, and fear--and tells the incredible story of how they survived and, ultimately, thrived. This is the story of the Great Depression in the United States, from the sweeping consequences of the market collapse to the more personal stories of individuals and communities caught up in the aftermath. Packed with photographs, primary...

"Dames and damnation. Hunger and hell -- that was his destiny in a raw, violent world of crooks, barbarians, and burlesque queens, of alcohol and flesh. ... In an age of uproar and calamity, he seized life -- and tried to strangle it by sheer brute force. That's Roughneck: bold, blunt, brilliant." --

An assessment of the political and physical dangers faced by the newly elected President Roosevelt in 1933 profiles such adversaries as would-be assassin Giuseppe Zangara and populist demagogues Huey Long and Charles Coughlin.

It's Labor Day weekend, 1935, and members of the Darling Dahlias--the garden club in little Darling, Alabama--are trying to keep their cool at the end of a sizzling summer. This isn't easy, though, since there's a firebug on the loose in Darling. He--or she!--strikes without apparent rhyme or reason, and things have gotten to the point where nobody feels safe. What's more, a dangerous hurricane is poised to hurl itself in Darling's direction, while...

"On October 29, 1929, life in the United States took a turn for the worst. The stock market the system that controls money in America plunged to a record low. But this event was only the beginning of many bad years to come. By the early 1930s, one out of three people was not working. People lost their jobs, their houses, or both and ended up in shantytowns called Hoovervilles named for the president at the time of the crash. By 1933, many banks had...