Great Depression

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone suggested that the Tottenham riot was fueled by citizens unleashing pent-up resentment over the weak economy, high unemployment rate, and historically deep budget cuts that decrease funding for poor communities in the United Kingdom. “This is the first generation since the Great Depression that have doubts about their future,” he […]

Just before the 2010 Midterm Elections, a CBS News poll found that black Americans were more likely than whites to express optimism about the economy.  And while nearly 50 percent of black Americans thought America’s next generation would be better off, only 16 percent of white Americans thought the same. In the wake of the worst […]

The Great Depression produced some of the greatest novelists in United States history: John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, Nathanael West. In 2011, as the U.S. recovers from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, our next guest wonders why the Great Recession hasn’t yet generated a book like “The Grapes of […]

Earthquakes and tsunamis are woven into the psyche of Japan. Kerry Smith, professor of history at Brown, remembers how the natural history of the country has become embedded in the social and political history of the country.