All Opinions Are Contained on LiveJournal: the Dirty Thirties edition

[mrissa]

So my childhood fascination with the Great Depression seems to have reared its head again (and is making me want to write SF -- not historical SF set in the 1930s, oddly enough, and not pulpy '30s-esque SF -- brains are weird). And what I'm wondering is: do any of you have recommendations for works about FDR and his presidency? My library has seventy-five titles listed just about Roosevelt, not even going into related topics. I can just grab an end and pull, see what historians' names might come drifting back to me from when I was a kid. But if there are any books or authors you'd particularly recommend, I'd appreciate hearing which.

Reading American history is so weird. When you get interested in a question like, "Why was there such a surge of interest in Thomas Aquinas and social justice among Austrian Catholics in the 1890s?" -- which is the other thing sparked by yesterday's reading -- the question is whether you can conveniently find that information at all, not whether you can skim through forty volumes of dumbed-down nonsense to get there. I mean, for Thermionic Night and Copper Mountain, the sifting of research materials went like this: Is it about Finland? Is it in English? Sold. And I was enough older when I started obsessing about the settlement of Iceland that I really did remember the names of historians when I wanted to go back to it. When you're 13, 14, 15, you have some misty notion of historiography. At 9, not so much. (I know these ages need adjusting upwards for people who were not raised by my mother. But I was.) The Great Depression project was how I learned about comparing sources and the advantages and disadvantages of perspectives at the time vs. many years after the fact -- which means that I wasn't really there yet when I was doing it. Which means that it'll take awhile for me to dredge up who was good and who was crap.

Well. Nothing ever wasted. And no tasty buried bone left forever, apparently.

Comments

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

All right. So, why was there a surge in interest about Thomas Aquinas among Austrian Catholics in the 1890's?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know yet, but I know where the best place to start finding out will be in the Dakota Cty Library system, nor did it take me long to find that place.

[adb-jaeger.livejournal.com]

I just finished "Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938", by John Brooks.

They could change the names and reprint it about today.

Recommended.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Do not read "Franklin & Eleanor", the one that was on my "get rid of" pile and oh good somebody took it. Author forgotten. It was blue. It sucked.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think someone close to me with taste widely divergent from mine liked that one.

[dhole.livejournal.com]

I don't actually have an answer to your question. But I do have an anecdote!

My grandfather, who made it through the Great Depression, would always get irritated when a documentary would use "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" and similar songs as a musical cue that they were talking about the Great Depression.

"During the 30s," he'd say, "we didn't listen to depressing music. We were already depressed. We listened to happy music." Then he'd do his impression of Al Jolson singing "About a Quarter to Nine".

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's awesome.

My grandpa doesn't really sing, but he can jitterbug like nobody's business.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I've not read any Roosevelt-specific bios, but I seem to recall that Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote one, and she's a pretty good writer in general. Sorry to not be more useful than that.

Did you end up reading any William Ian Miller on Icelandic sagas and blood feuds? He was a professor at my law school and taught a class called Blood Feuds that was very popular, though I didn't take it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I did read Bloodtaking and Peacemaking, and thanks for reminding me to look for his other stuff.

Brains are Great!

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

> not historical SF set in the 1930s, oddly enough, and not pulpy '30s-esque SF -- brains are weird

=v= Inspired by the Great Depression but not to mine well-mined veins? Sounds pretty awesome to me.

Re: Brains are Great!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I will do my best to shoehorn in all the awesome I can.

It helps that I don't think that the Great Depression was all the fault of people just like the people I currently dislike.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Studs Terkel had an oral history of the Great Depression called Hard Times, which was good, although not in any sense a general history.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I was unclear. I wanted stuff on the Roosevelt Presidency and its inner workings/politics in specific, not a general history of the Great Depression.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I was skimming pretty fast, so you may have been clearer than I realized.