Library Guides: Great Depression: Home

Introduction

This guide suggests useful resources for studying the Great Depression Era of the 1930s, with an emphasis on materials available through Western Libraries, the CPNWS, and/or online. It is not exhaustive. Contact Western Libraries Research Consultation Desk or Archives & Special Collections' staff if you need assistance finding more information.

Databases

America: History and Life [EBSCO]
An index of over 1,800 journals from 1895 to the present on the history and life of the United States and Canada. Includes citations and links to books and media reviews.

Western Libraries provides access to a wide variety of article and research databases (a WWU log-in is required). In addition to the examples listed below, please see the Libraries' online guide to Databases A-Z and/or ask staff at the Libraries' Research Consultation Desk for assistance.

For additional History databases, see: https://libguides.wwu.edu/az.php?s=62130&p=1

American Decades [Gale]
An encyclopedia providing a window into each decade of the 20th Century. It covers public figures, major events, and topics such as education, politics, and fashion.
EBSCO Multi-Database Search
Search all EBSCO databases at once, or click "choose databases" to customize the databases included in your search.
History Link: The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History
A freely-accessible, authoritative encyclopedia of Washington State history created for the benefit of students, teachers, journalists, scholars, researchers, and the general public.
JSTOR [ITHAKA]
A multi-disciplinary full-text database of articles from many scholarly journals. Content available is usually 1-5 years behind the most recently published journal article. Also contains some current journals and books.

Related Research Guides

Accessing Archives & Special Collections and Primary Resources
Information about now to access and use primary source collections at Western.
Local and Regional History: Using Primary Resources for Research
This guide lists a selection of local and regional archives, libraries, museums and other resources to which we frequently refer researchers. This list is not exhaustive. Contact us if you have questions about locating records on a particular topic.
Oral Histories: How to Research
A guide to finding oral histories through Western Libraries, focusing on resources available online or through the Archives & Special Collections.
Women's History: Archival & Primary Resources
This guide focuses on local and region-specific materials available through Western Libraries Archives & Special Collections. Contact Archives & Special Collections staff and/or the Western Libraries Reference Desk if you need assistance finding more information.
World War I and World War II: Primary Historical Resources
An introduction to resources documenting World War I and World War II history, focusing on the local and regional impact of these conflicts.

Where can I locate historical resources at Western?

Western Libraries' Archives & Special Collections programs house and provide access to a wide variety of rare, unique and archival resources. An overview of these programs and information about how to access their collections is available via this online tutorial. Please don't hesitate to contact Archives & Special Collections staff with questions about collections and how to access resources.

From the Library Catalog (Published Resources)

American Decades Primary Sources by Cynthia Rose; Lawrence W Baker; Rebecca Valentine
Call Number: Reference E169.1.A471977

[1] 1900-1909 -- [2] 1910-1919 -- [3] 1920-1929 -- [4] 1930-1939 -- [5] 1940-1949 -- [6] 1950-1959 -- [7] 1960-1969 -- [8] 1970-1979 -- [9] 1980-1989 -- [10] 1990-1999 -- [11] 2000-2009
Contains over two thousand primary sources on twentieth-century American history and culture, featuring seventy-five different types of sources, arranged chronologically in twelve categories, including the arts, education, government and politics, media, medicine and health, religion, and sports.

You may find the following subject terms useful in searching the Libraries' catalog (please ask us or contact the Libraries Research Consultation Desk at 650-2836 if you need assistance):

Depressions -- 1929
Depressions -- 1929 -- Northwest Pacific
Depressions -- 1929 -- United States
Depressions -- 1929 -- United States -- History
Depressions -- 1929 -- United States -- Personal Narratives
Dust Bowl Era -- 1931-1939
Economic conditions -- 1918-1945

also United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945

Economic history -- 1918-1945
Economics -- United States -- History
Social conditions -- 1918-1932

also United States -- Social conditions -- 1933-1945

Stock Market Crash, 1929

Brother, can you spare a dime? [sound recording]: American song during the Great Depression by New York: New World Records, p1977.
Brother, can you spare a dime (Bing Crosby) -- The boulevard of broken dreams (Hal Kemp) -- Life is just a bowl of cherries (Rudy Vallee) --In the still of the night (Glen Gray) -- Love walked in (Kenny Baker) -- On the good ship Lollypop (Shirley Temple) -- Unemployment stomp (Big Bill Broonzy) --The gold diggers' song [We're in the money] (Dick Powell) -- All in and down and out blues (Uncle Dave Macon) -- Fifteen miles from Birmingham (Delmore Brothers) -- The coal loading machine (Evening Breezes Sextet) -- NRA blues (Bill Cox) -- I ain't got no home in this world anymore (Woody Guthrie) -- The death of Mother Jones (Gene Autry) -- All I want (Pete Seeger & Almanac Singers) -- The white cliffs of Dover (Glenn Miller & orch.)
Daring to Look by Anne Whiston Spirn
Publication Date: 2008

Daring to Look presents never-before-published photos and captions from Dorothea Lange’s fieldwork in California, the Pacific Northwest, and North Carolina during 1939. Lange’s images of squatter camps, benighted farmers, and stark landscapes are stunning, and her captions—which range from simple explanations of settings to historical notes and biographical sketches—add unexpected depth, bringing her subjects and their struggles unforgettably to life, often in their own words. When Lange was dismissed from the Farm Security Administration at the end of 1939, these photos and field notes were consigned to archives, where they languished, rarely seen. With Daring to Look, Anne Whiston Spirn not only returns them to the public eye, but sets them in the context of Lange’s pioneering life, work, and struggle for critical recognition—firmly placing Lange in her rightful position at the forefront of American photography. “[A] thoughtful and meticulously researched account of Lange’s career. . . . Spirn, a photographer herself, traces Lange’s path, visiting her locations and subjects in a fascinating series of ‘then and now’ shots.”—Publishers Weekly
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt by Robert Cohen (Editor)
Publication Date: 2002

Impoverished young Americans had no greater champion during the Depression than Eleanor Roosevelt. As First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt used her newspaper columns and radio broadcasts to crusade for expanded federal aid to poor children and teens. She was the most visible spokesperson for the National Youth Administration, the New Deal's central agency for aiding the needy young, and she was adamant in insisting that federal aid to young people be administered without discrimination so that it reached blacks as well as whites, girls as well as boys. This activism made Mrs. Roosevelt a beloved figure among poor teens and children, who between 1933 and 1941 wrote her thousands of letters describing their problems and requesting her help. "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt" presents nearly 200 of these extraordinary documents that open a window into the lives of the Depression's youngest victims. In their own words, the letter writers confide what it was like to be needy and young during the worst economic crisis in American history. Revealing both the strengths and the limitations of New Deal liberalism, this book depicts an administration concerned and caring enough to elicit such moving appeals for help yet unable to respond in the very personal ways the letter writers hoped.
Down & out in the Great Depression: letters from the "forgotten man" by Robert S. McElvaine
Call Number: Available at Western Library Wilson 3W - Books E169.D746 1983

Publication Date: 1983

Reactions to Hoover and economic breakdown -- Proud but frightened: Middle-class hardship,The grass roots: Rural depression, A worse depression: Black Americans in the 1930's -- To be old, sick, poor, The forgotten children, Attitudes toward relief - - The conservative --The desperate -- The Cynical -- The rebellious -- The unconvinced -- "Our Savior."

A collection of letters by the ordinary men, women, and children who suffered through the Great Depression.
Dust Bowl Descent by Ganzel, Bill
Publication Date: 1984

United States Farm Security Administration; Dust Bowl Era (1931-1939) Documentary photography
Dust Bowl Diary by Ann Marie Low
Call Number: Wilson 3W - Books F636 .L92 1984

Publication Date: 1984

“Life in what the newspapers call ‘the Dust Bowl’ is becoming a gritty nightmare,” Ann Marie Low wrote in 1934. Her diary vividly captures that “gritty nightmare” as it was lived by one rural family—and by millions of other Americans. Ann Marie Low’s diary, supplemented with reminiscences, offers a rich, circumstantial view of rural life a half century ago... Here, too, is an iconoclastic on-the-scene account of how a federal work project, the construction of a wildlife refuge, actually operated.
Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History by Dayton Duncan
Call Number: Available at Western Library Oversize Books F595.D93 2012

Publication Date: 2012

For almost a decade, a devastating combination of drought, wind, and poor farming practices turned millions of acres of the Great Plains into a wasteland. Ceaseless "black blizzards," turned night into day, killed crops and livestock, threatened the lives of small children, and buried homesteaders' hopes under huge dunes of dirt. The authors tell the story through private letters, newspaper accounts, and vivid interviews conducted with dozens of survivors -- the last living witnesses of the Dust Bowl, who provide scaring details of their families' ordeals. More than 300 archival photos, some from acclaimed photographers and some -- never before published -- from amateur locals, help bring this critical period to life, when the forces of greed, misinformation, and wishful thinking conspired to nearly sweep away the breadbasket of the nation.
Essays on the Great Depression by Ben S. Bernanke
Call Number: Available at Western Library Wilson 3E - Books HB3717 1929.B365 2000

Publication Date: 2000

Few periods in history compare to the Great Depression. Stock market crashes, bread lines, bank runs, and wild currency speculation were worldwide phenomena--all occurring with war looming in the background. This period has provided economists with a marvelous laboratory for studying the links between economic policies and institutions and economic performance. Here, Ben Bernanke has gathered together his essays on why the Great Depression was so devastating.This broad view shows us that while the Great Depression was an unparalleled disaster, some economies pulled up faster than others, and some made an opportunity out of it. By comparing and contrasting the economic strategies and statistics of the world's nations as they struggled to survive economically, the fundamental lessons of macroeconomics stand out in bold relief against a background of immense human suffering. The essays in this volume present a uniquely coherent view of the economic causes and worldwide propagation of the depression.
Hard times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel
Publication Date: 1970
Regions in transition : the Northern Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest in the Great Depression by Rolland Dewing
Call Number: Western Library Wilson 4C - Northwest Collection F595.D49 2006

Publication Date: 2006
The Great Depression and its fifty-year shadow: proceedings of a conference held at Western Washington University, November 1981 by Phyllis W. Bultmann (editor)
Publication Date: 1981
The Years of Bitterness and Pride by Farm Security Administration Staff
Publication Date: 1975
When the Old Left Was Young by Robert Cohen
Call Number: Wilson 4W LA229 .C62 1993

Publication Date: 1993

The Depression era saw the first mass student movement in American history. The crusade, led in large part by young Communists, was both an anti-war campaign and a movement championing a broader and more egalitarian vision of the welfare state than that of the New Dealers. The movement arose from a massive political awakening on campus, caused by the economic crisis of the 1930s, the escalating international tensions, and threat of world war wrought by fascism. At its peak, in the late 1930s, the movement mobilized at least a half million collegians in annual strikes against war. Adding to the emerging portrait of political life in the 1930s, this book is the result of an extraordinary amount of research, has fascinating individual stories to tell, and offers the first comprehensive history of this student insurgency.