Ignited an interest in oral history recording. ( )

In this book, Terkel relays oral histories of people who were exposed to the Depression including farmers, politicians, industrialists, African Americans, artists. You name it, it's in there. It is history through the eyes of the common and not-so-common man.

It strikes me that a book like this would be highly unlikely to be published today - - in the days where YouTube and blogging provide thousands of first person accounts of the world around us. Available in seconds.

I thought that this book would be truly fascinating, but because I didn't really know enough (or recollect enough history classes) about the Depression, I found myself constantly distracted by the many acronyms for government programs. Some of the folks really told about what life was like in and interesting way, but others reminded me of old, boring people who just were telling dull, tangential stories.

All in all, I think if the author had prefaced his chapter with some analysis of the group of people he was talking to and some historical facts, I would have loved the book. But the standalone oral histories didn't quite do it for me.

Nonetheless, I would read more Terkel, but if I selected one of his books that focused on a historical event, I'd read a background book first on the event so I was a little more educated before delving into the histories. ( )

A masterfully organized relating of oral anecdotes from Great Depression America. The author collected them all himself and they range from touching to depressing to amusing to astounding. ( )

nonfiction/collection of oral histories from various perspectives on the 1930s in the U.S. ( )

A bit of a slog. Less drama than I expected, less diversity (both in the interviewees and in their voices), and more interviews with the rich and privileged. As an oral history, it doesn't compare with Svetlana Alexievich's "Voices from Chernobyl."

> I got out of art school in 1930. That was the proper time for any artist to get out of school. (Laughs.) Everybody was unemployed, and the artist didn't seem strange any more. ( )