Hard Times

Richard Striner is professor of history at Washington College and the author of Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Burden too Great to Bear (2014) and Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power (2010), a History Book Club selection, as well as Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery (2006).

In this concise overview of economic depressions in the United States, Striner, a professor of history at Washington College, highlights the boom-and-bust nature of economic growth, paying special attention to the role of financial panics in precipitating economic contractions. Striner begins in colonial times and covers the bank wars of the antebellum period and the tide of populist anger embodied by the “Greenbackers,” who advocated increasing the country’s money supply with non-gold-backed currency, before devoting three chapters to the Great Depression and its lessons. The final section sketches an intellectual history of the two major schools in economic thinking—Keynesianism and monetarism—before concluding with reflections on the Great Recession of 2008, which, he writes, “began... in much the same manner” as previous economic disasters, with ill-conceived practices in the financial sector. Striner is a lucid guide to economic history, explaining fractional reserve banking and the workings of financial panics with ease. He keeps innovations in money and banking at the heart of the narrative, lending it analytical heft.... [T]his intelligent and scrupulous account imparts a detailed knowledge of U.S. depressions and the political and economic responses they generated.

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Hard Times from Colonial to Postrevolutionary AmericaChapter 2: Hard Times and the Financial Panics of 1819 and 1837Chapter 3: The Panics of 1873 and 1893–And Hard Times in BetweenChapter 4: Depressions and Policy Disputes in America, Circa 1720–1928Chapter 5: The Onset of the Great DepressionChapter 6: The Early New Deal and the DepressionChapter 7: 1934–A Year of Fear and Rage in AmericaChapter 8: The Politics of Class Conflict During 1935 and 1936Chapter 9: Recovery and Recession, 1937–1939Chapter 10: The Great Depression and American Culture in the 1930sChapter 11: How the Great Depression Ended: The Keynesian School of ThoughtChapter 12: The Revolt Against KeynesChapter 13: The Great RecessionA Note on SourcesIndexAbout the Author