THE GREAT DEPRESSION A DIARY BY BENJAMIN ROTH

"We imagine the Great Depression at two extremes - Franklin Rosevelt's jaunty smile and the haunting images of Dustbowl destitution. But in between were everyday middle-class strivers like Benjamin Roth, trying to sort through the wreckage....Roth's incisive diaries....speak to our economic hopes and fears directly, and to our bewilderment of our own time." - Jonathan Alter

In the early 1920's, young lawyer Benjamin Roth settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good - until the stock market crash of 1929. After two years of crisis, Roth began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economy life. He set out to record his impressions in a diary - a document that would grow to span several volumes over more than a decade.

Roth's perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to those of our own era. Fearful of inflation and skeptical of big government, he yearned for signs of true recovery, and eventually formed his own theories of how a prudent person might survive hard times. Edited by James Ledbetter, editor of Slate's "The Big Money." and Roth's son Daniel B. Roth, this book reveals another side of the Great Depression - one lived through by ordinary, middle-class Americans, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future.

Contents Chapter 1 June 5, 1931 - October 17 1931 Chapter 2 October 20, 1931 - November 11, 1932 Chapter 3 November 19, 1932 - April 22, 1933 Chapter 4 April 26, 1933 - December 28, 1933 Chapter 5 January 10,1934 - November 6, 1936 Chaptr 6 December 4, 1936 - September 11, 1939 Chapter 7 September 12, 1939 - December 31, 1941

This book contains 257 pages.