Vivid Pictures of Bad Old Days

The Great Depression, b. 1929, d. 1939 (?)—you have to think about those hard times in a context of chronology and generations. For anyone 45 and over the Depression happened too recently; the memory is still painful, we can still see the breadlines and the shantytowns, the Hoovervilles, in the mind’s eye. We may be inclined to simplify a little, to say that FDR and the New Deal “saved the country,” though we know well how much of the economic and social programs were pall...