He ends the book speaking to people of individualism and self-determination. Terkel talks to artists of the Federal Arts Project. We learn of unemployment councils that helped evicted persons, lawyers and judges that bent laws to ease poor peoples' pain, and public servants that faced public anger and accusations of Communist sympathy to help communities.

In the final book, Terkel brings his gaze sharply to the way people survived personally.

The brief Book 4 concerns the approach of World War Two and its effects in ending the Great Depression. In this book, Terkel seems to refute the notion that a socialist revolution was brewing in America.

He also interviews players in the leftist movements of the time: Communists, Catholic workers, Wobblies and the like. He goes on to discuss other major players in the political situation of the time: Huey Long, Dr. Terkel begins by interviewing power players and brain trusters of Roosevelt's New Deal. The establishment of the Depression is the focus of Book 3 of Hard Times. In these sections he explores how their pain was alleviated to some extent by unions and government intervention, respectively. Terkel focuses on two groups of Americans that were particularly vulnerable: coal miners and farmers. It also profile hustlers, con men, and bootleggers who survived by any means necessary. This book includes inspiring tales of sheltered persons who lose nearly everything and find their humanity. The book ends with two chapters that discuss the rise of labor unions in the United States.īook 2 focuses on the means Americans used in the 1930's to survive the Depressions' depredations. On the other hand, in the chapter The Big Money, Terkel shows how the affluent dealt with the Crash of '29. On one hand, it deals with the traveling culture of hobos and itinerants and the means by which families survived. It begins discussing the veterans' Bonus March in Washington that put the nail in the coffin of the Hoover administration. The first of Hard Times' five books gives an overview of the Depression. In his prologue, Terkel explains that the time has come to speak to the ignorant young about catastrophe. Written in the late 1960's, the book also includes interviews with younger people. It provides a top to bottom vision of the Depression, from the establishment that coped with the crisis to the hustlers and hobos that scraped by through it. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel is a panoramic chronicle of the 1930's, comprised entirely of interviews.

Hard times terkel