Read complete books and articles on: 1930's America

United States - officially United States of America, republic (2000 pop. 281,421,906), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. It consists of 50 states and a federal district. The conterminous (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) United States stretches across central North America from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, and from Canada on the north to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. The state of Alaska is located in extreme NW North America between the Arctic and Pacific oceans and is bordered by Canada on the east. The state of Hawaii, an island chain, is situated in the E central Pacific Ocean c.2,100 mi (3,400 km) SW of San Francisco. Washington, D.C., is the capital of the United States, and New York is its largest city.

The outlying territories and areas of the United States include: in the Caribbean Basin, Puerto Rico (a commonwealth associated with the United States) and the Virgin Islands of the United States (purchased from Denmark in 1917); in the Pacific Ocean, Guam (ceded by Spain after the Spanish-American War), the Northern Mariana Islands (a commonwealth associated with the United States), American Samoa, Wake Island, and several other islands. The United States also has compacts of free association with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Political Geography

The conterminous United States may be divided into several regions: the New England states ( Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut), the Middle Atlantic states ( New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia), the Southeastern states ( North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky), the states of the Midwest ( Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri), the Great Plains states ( North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas), the Mountain states ( Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah), the Southwestern states ( Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona), and the states of the Far West ( Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada).

Alaska is the largest state in area (656,424 sq mi/1,700,578 sq km), and Rhode Island is the smallest (1,545 sq mi/4,003 sq km). California has the largest population (2000 pop. 33,871,648), while Wyoming has the fewest people (2000 pop. 493,782). In the late 20th cent., Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Colorado, Utah, Georgia, and Texas experienced the fastest rates of population growth, while California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina gained the greatest number of residents. West Virginia, North Dakota, and the District of Columbia experienced population decreases over the same period. The largest U.S. cities are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia. Among the other major cities are Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Saint Louis, Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas– Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Albuquerque, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Long Beach, San Diego, and Honolulu.

Physical Geography

The conterminous United States may be divided into seven broad physiographic divisions: from east to west, the Atlantic–Gulf Coastal Plain; the Appalachian Highlands; the Interior Plains; the Interior Highlands; the Rocky Mountain System; the Intermontane Region; and the Pacific Mountain System. An eighth division, the Laurentian Uplands, a part of the Canadian Shield, dips into the United States from Canada in the Great Lakes region. It is an area of little local relief, with an irregular drainage system and many lakes, as well as some of the oldest exposed rocks in the United States.

The terrain of the N United States was formed by the great continental ice sheets that covered N North America during the late Cenozoic Era. The southern edge of the ice sheet is roughly traced by a line of terminal moraines extending west from E Long Island and then along the course of the Ohio and Missouri rivers to the Rocky Mts.; land north of this line is covered by glacial material. Alaska and the mountains of NW United States had extensive mountain glaciers and were heavily eroded. Large glacial lakes (see Lake Bonneville under Bonneville Salt Flats; Lahontan, Lake) occupied sections of the Basin and Range province; the Great Salt Lake and the other lakes of this region are remnants of the glacial lakes.

The East and the Gulf Coast

The Atlantic–Gulf Coastal Plain extends along the east and southeast coasts of the United States from E Long Island to the Rio Grande; Cape Cod and the islands off SE Massachusetts are also part of this region. Although narrow in the north, the Atlantic Coastal Plain widens in the south, merging with the Gulf Coastal Plain in Florida. The Atlantic and Gulf coasts are essentially coastlines of submergence, with numerous estuaries, embayments, islands, sandspits, and barrier beaches backed by lagoons. The northeast coast has many fine natural harbors, such as those of New York Bay and Chesapeake Bay, but south of the great capes of the North Carolina coast (Fear, Lookout, and Hatteras) there are few large bays. A principal feature of the lagoon-lined Gulf Coast is the great delta of the Mississippi River.

The Atlantic Coastal Plain rises in the west to the rolling Piedmont (the falls along which were an early source of waterpower), a hilly transitional zone leading to the Appalachian Mountains. These ancient mountains, a once towering system now worn low by erosion, extend southwest from SE Canada to the Gulf Coastal Plain in Alabama. In E New England, the Appalachians extend in a few places to the Atlantic Ocean, contributing to a rocky, irregular coastline. The Appalachians and the Adirondack Mountains of New York (which are geologically related to the Canadian Shield) include all the chief highlands of E United States; Mt. Mitchell (6,684 ft/2,037 m high), in the Black Mts. of North Carolina, is the highest point of E North America.

The Plains and Highlands of the Interior

Extending more than 1,000 mi (1,610 km) from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mts. and lying between Canada (into which they extend) in the north and the Gulf Coastal Plain in the south are the undulating Interior Plains. Once covered by a great inland sea, the Interior Plains are underlain by sedimentary rock. Almost all of the region is drained by one of the world's greatest river systems—the Mississippi-Missouri. The Interior Plains may be divided into two sections: the fertile central lowlands, the agricultural heartland of the United States; and the Great Plains, a treeless plateau that gently rises from the central lowlands to the foothills of the Rocky Mts. The Black Hills of South Dakota form the region's only upland area.

The Interior Highlands are located just W of the Mississippi River between the Interior Plains and the Gulf Coastal Plain. This region consists of the rolling Ozark Plateau (see Ozarks) to the north and the Ouachita Mountains, which are similar in structure to the ridge and valley section of the Appalachians, to the east.

The Western Mountains and Great Basin

West of the Great Plains are the lofty Rocky Mountains. This geologically young and complex system extends into NW United States from Canada and runs S into New Mexico. There are numerous high peaks in the Rockies; the highest is Mt. Elbert (14,433 ft/4,399 m). The Rocky Mts. are divided into four sections—the Northern Rockies, the Middle Rockies, the Wyoming (Great Divide) Basin, and the Southern Rockies. Along the crest of the Rockies is the Continental Divide, separating Atlantic-bound drainage from that heading for the Pacific Ocean.

Between the Rocky Mts. and the ranges to the west is the Intermontane Region, an arid expanse of plateaus, basins, and ranges. The Columbia Plateau, in the north of the region, was formed by volcanic lava and is drained by the Columbia River and its tributary the Snake River, both of which have cut deep canyons into the plateau. The enormous Colorado Plateau, an area of sedimentary rock, is drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries; there the Colorado River has entrenched itself to form the Grand Canyon, one of the world's most impressive scenic wonders. West of the plateaus is the Basin and Range province, an area of extensive semidesert.

The lowest point in North America, in Death Valley (282 ft/86 m below sea level), is there. The largest basin in the region is the Great Basin, an area of interior drainage (the Humboldt River is the largest stream) and of numerous salt lakes, including the Great Salt Lake. Between the Intermontane Region and the Pacific Ocean is the Pacific Mountain System, a series of ranges generally paralleling the coast, formed by faulting and volcanism. The Cascade Range, with its numerous volcanic peaks extends S from SW Canada into N California, and from there is continued south by the Sierra Nevada, a great fault block. Mt. Whitney (14,495 ft/4,418 m), in the Sierra Nevada, is the highest peak in the conterminous United States.

The Pacific Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii

West of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada and separated from them by a structural trough are the Coast Ranges, which extend along the length of the U.S. Pacific coast. The Central Valley in California, the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and the Puget

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: 1930's America

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Nickel and Dime Decade: American Popular Culture during the 1930s » Read Now
by Gary Dean Best. 172 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This study shows that, despite numerous surface similarities, the popular culture of the 1930s was different from that of the 1920s in a variety of ways, and not only because of the Great Depression. It was a period of quiet desperation and shifting values, one in which nickels and dimes replaced...
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This study shows that, despite numerous surface similarities, the popular culture of the 1930s was different from that of the 1920s in a variety of ways, and not only because of the Great Depression. It was a period of quiet desperation and shifting values, one in which nickels and dimes replaced dollars as the currency of popular culture, and in which the emphasis was on finding methods to occupy idle time and idle minds. Popular culture during the 1930s is important for understanding not only how Americans coped, but why they did so with such good humor and so little of the discontent visible elsewhere in the world. An appreciation of popular culture during the 1930s is essential to understanding other aspects of the decade.
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2.

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 » Read Now
by David M. Kennedy. 936 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom From Fear tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an...
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Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. Freedom From Fear tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities. The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedy vividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than a simple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a century before 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated through repeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflicting untold misery on city and countryside alike. Nor was the fabled prosperity of the 1920s as uniformly shared as legend portrays. Countless Americans, especially if they were farmers, African Americans, or recent immigrants, eked out thread bare lives on the margins of national life. For them, the Depression was but another of the ordeals of fear and insecurity with which they were sadly familiar. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal wrung from the trauma of the 1930s a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, including the Social Security Act, new banking and financial laws, regulatory legislation, and new opportunities for organized labor. Taken together, those reforms gave a measure of security to millions of Americans who had never had much of it, and with it a fresh sense of having a stake in their country. Freedom From Fear tells the story of the New Deal's achievements, without slighting its shortcomings, contradictions, and failures. It is a story rich in drama and peopled with unforgettable personalities, including the incandescent but enigmatic figure of Roosevelt himself. Even as the New Deal was coping with the Depression, a still more fearsome menace was developing abroad--Hitler's thirst for war in Europe, coupled with the imperial ambitions of Japan in Asia. The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked world wide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their own way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world. Freedom From Fear explains how the nation agonized over its role in World War II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could. Freedom From Fear is a comprehensive and colorful account of the most convulsive period in American history, excepting only the Civil War--a period that formed the crucible in which modern America was formed. The Oxford History of the United States The Atlantic Monthly has praised The Oxford History of the United States as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book. Who touches these books touches a profession." Conceived under the general editorship of one of the leading American historians of our time, C. Vann Woodward, The Oxford History of the United States blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative. Previous volumes are Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution; James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (which won a Pulitzer Prize and was a New York Times Best Seller); and James T. Patterson's Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974 (which won a Bancroft Prize).
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3.

The New Deal: T he National Level » Read Now
by John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, David Brody. 341 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Modern America Number 4 THE NEW DEAL Volume One...Manufactured in the United States of America Libran, of Congress Cataloguing in Publication...Braeman, John. The New Deal...
4.

Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939: Decades of Promise and Pain » Read Now
by David E. Kyvig. 272 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

During the 1920s and 1930s, changes in the American population, increasing urbanization, and innovations in technology exerted major influences on the daily lives of ordinary people. Explore how everyday living changed during these years when use of automobiles and home electrification first became...
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During the 1920s and 1930s, changes in the American population, increasing urbanization, and innovations in technology exerted major influences on the daily lives of ordinary people. Explore how everyday living changed during these years when use of automobiles and home electrification first became commonplace, when radio emerged, and when cinema, with the addition of sound, became broadly popular. This enjoyable read brings the period clearly into focus.
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5.

Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties » Read Now
by Murray Kempton. 335 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY KINGSPORT PRESS, INC., KINGSPORT...lives to the myth of any decade; and, in America, only a limited few lived by the...
6.

Think Back on Us: A Contemporary Chronicle of the 1930's » Read Now
by Henry Dan Piper, Malcolm Cowley. 402 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...67-10024 Printed in the United States of America Designed by Andor Braun CONTENTS...Have To Be Censors 152 American and English Journals of Opinion 156...liveliest decades...
7.

Listening to Radio, 1920-1950 » Read Now
by Ray Barfield. 222 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This fresh and engaging account of early radio's contributions to U.S. social and cultural life brings together varied perspectives of listeners who recall the programs that delighted and enchanted them. Radio, the first electronic medium to enter the home, is examined as a chief purveyor of family...
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This fresh and engaging account of early radio's contributions to U.S. social and cultural life brings together varied perspectives of listeners who recall the programs that delighted and enchanted them. Radio, the first electronic medium to enter the home, is examined as a chief purveyor of family entertainment and as a bridge across regional differences. Barfield draws from over 150 accounts, providing a forum and a context for listeners of early radio to share their memories - from their first impressions of "that magical box" to favorite shows. Opening chapters trace the changing perceptions of radio as a "guest" or an "invader" in U.S. homes during the exuberant 1920s, the cash-scarce 1930s, and the rapidly changing World War II and post-war years. Later chapters offer listener responses to every major program type, including news reporting and commentary, sportscasts, drama, comedy series, crime and terror shows, educational and cultural programs, children's adventure series, soap operas, audience participation shows, and musical presentations.
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8.

Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 » Read Now
by Robert W. McChesney. 400 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This work shows in detail the emergence and consolidation of U.S. commercial broadcasting economically, politically, and ideologically. This process was met by organized opposition and a general level of public antipathy that has been almost entirely overlooked by previous scholarship. McChesney...
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This work shows in detail the emergence and consolidation of U.S. commercial broadcasting economically, politically, and ideologically. This process was met by organized opposition and a general level of public antipathy that has been almost entirely overlooked by previous scholarship. McChesney highlights the activities and arguments of this early broadcast reform movement of the 1930s. The reformers argued that commercial broadcasting was inimical to the communication requirements of a democratic society and that the only solution was to have a dominant role for nonprofit and noncommercial broadcasting. Although the movement failed, McChesney argues that it provides important lessons not only for communication historians and policymakers, but for those concerned with media and how they are used.
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9.

Songs of Love and Death: The Classical American Horror Film of the 1930s » Read Now
by Michael Sevastakis. 209 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This book examines eleven horror films in-depth and their relationships to Romantic Gothic literary conventions--mainly, but not solely, found in works dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. To illustrate the use of these conventions in film, Sevastakis analyzes shots from scenes and sequences of...
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This book examines eleven horror films in-depth and their relationships to Romantic Gothic literary conventions--mainly, but not solely, found in works dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. To illustrate the use of these conventions in film, Sevastakis analyzes shots from scenes and sequences of all films discussed. Due to the large quantity of horror films produced during this period, the films in this book have been selected on the basis of their supernatural and preternatural content, and on four conventions predicated on fictional literary models dealing with the villain-hero.
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10.

Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties » Read Now
by R. C. Reynolds. 180 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Stage Left The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties by...0-87875-311-7 Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Acknowledgements...altered form...
11.

Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930s » Read Now
by Carol Martin. 182 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

How the craze of exhausting marathon dancing mirrored America's struggle to outlast social problems of the era.
12.

Women of the Depression: Caste and Culture in San Antonio, 1929-1939 » Read Now
by Julia Kirk Blackwelder. 284 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Antonio---Economic conditions. 3. Afro-American women--Texas--San Antonio-- Economic conditions. 4. Mexican American women--Texas-- San Antonio--Economic...Manufactured in...
13.

Yesterday's Stories: Popular Women's Novels of the Twenties and Thirties » Read Now
by Patricia Raub. 136 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

While scholars have begun to study popular women's novels of the 19th century, there has been relatively little attention paid to popular women's fiction of the early 20th century. This is the first study to focus on popular fiction written by, for, and about women in the period between the two...
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While scholars have begun to study popular women's novels of the 19th century, there has been relatively little attention paid to popular women's fiction of the early 20th century. This is the first study to focus on popular fiction written by, for, and about women in the period between the two world wars. The author examines such well-known best sellers as Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, as well as dozens of other popular novels that have been all but forgotten today, and seeks to uncover the values and attitudes widely held by middle-class women of the era by examining the basic beliefs affirmed in the books they read.
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14.

The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 » Read Now
by James Edward Smethurst. 288 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 surveys African American poetry between the onset of the Depression and the early days of the Cold War. The New Red Negro considers the relationship between the thematic and formal choices of African American poets and...
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The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 surveys African American poetry between the onset of the Depression and the early days of the Cold War. The New Red Negro considers the relationship between the thematic and formal choices of African American poets and organized ideology from the "proletarian" early 1930s to the "neo-modernist" late 1940s. This study examines poetry by writers who are canonical, less well-known, and virtually unknown.
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15.

Tycoons and Locusts; a Regional Look at Hollywood Fiction of the 1930s » Read Now
by Walter Wells, Harry T. Moore. 139 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Crosscurrents/Modern critiques Bibliography: p. 1. American fiction--Hollywood, Calif.--History and criticism. 2. American fiction--California, Southern--History and...
16.

The Suburb of Dissent: Cultural Politics in the United States and Canada during the 1930s » Read Now
by Caren Irr. 294 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper + Typeset in...at Penn State, Mary Chapman and the American Studies reading group at the...