Dark Realities

The Roaring Twenties, jazz music, Hollywood glamour - the end of World War I ushered in a golden age for America, with a booming stock market and rampant property speculation. It seemed as if - with President Harding and then President Coolidge in charge - the good times would never end. In marked contrast were the fortunes of many European countries, which were struggling to repay war debts while the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were plunging Germany into economic catastrophe. Later, with Herbert Hoover as President, the US markets continued to climb, even though some investors began to sell, sensing trouble ahead. The stock market crash came in October 1929, and America slid into deep depression. Against a background of bank failures, industrial decline, rural poverty, and unemployment, there was an outbreak of protests, strikes, and riots. Hoover was swept from power in 1932, and it fell to the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to revive America's fortunes with a number of ground-breaking new programs which made up the New Deal. Dark Realities covers this turbulent period in America's history. The book introduces the key figures of this time period and reveals the impact that the Great Depression had on the American people. *** "Written to be accessible to lay readers and historians alike....a straightforward chronicle of some of the bleakest years in America's history. Dark Realities is an excellent contribution....highly recommended especially for public and college library collections." - Midwest Book Review, Library Bookwatch, March 2013, American History Shelf