Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

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Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 1,181 ratings · 127 reviews

In this unique recreation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, and writers, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information...more

Paperback, 480 pages

Published July 7th 2005 by New Press, The (first published 1970)

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Jul 16, 2008 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Laura by: HSTAA 101

Shelves: history, biography

This is a great collection of reminiscences from those who lived through the Depression. What was striking to me was the variety of experience - I know it should be obvious, but I kind of thought that EVERYONE was dirt poor and riding the rails, and of course that's not true. The Depression affected everyone, but in different ways - and that really comes through here. I would say this is an absolute must-read for anyone studying or curious about the Depression.

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Nov 12, 2012 Ilya rated it 5 of 5 stars

Interviews with about 100 Americans about their experiences during the Great Depression (and with their Boomer children who complain that their parents keep reminding them that they have it too easy). The interviewees come from all walks of life: an automotive worker and a board member of General Motors, a psychiatrist treating millionaires and a Cuban American cigar maker. As could be expected, the Depression brought out the best in some people (feeding the hungry) and the worst in others (duri...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Recommended to Kate by: Toledo-Lucas County Public Library

Shelves: favoritereads

A really great and very timely read. I highly recommend it!

(If you don't want to read the whole book, This American Life recently played a number of them on the Nov. 7 show.)

The book has such a simple premise- Studs Terkel interviewed people about their experiences during the Great Depression. He talked to a wide cross section of society - musicians, hobos who traveled on train cars, the wealthy, coal miners, Cesar Chavez, farmers, migrant workers, union activists, doctors, social workers, newsp...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Dorothea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Reading this book was like reading a very great novel: the sort of novel that is long and complicated in structure, weaving many stories together into the same story, bringing many characters together in such a way that the reader becomes invested in all of their lives and senses that not only are these characters part of the story, but everyone around them depends on its outcome. And the meaning of the story will change the reader's life too.

If really good oral history were more common, it migh...more Reading this book was like reading a very great novel: the sort of novel that is long and complicated in structure, weaving many stories together into the same story, bringing many characters together in such a way that the reader becomes invested in all of their lives and senses that not only are these characters part of the story, but everyone around them depends on its outcome. And the meaning of the story will change the reader's life too.

If really good oral history were more common, it might be better to say of a great novel that it reminds one of great oral history. Because great novels capture real human emotions and reactions at some momentous time -- oral histories do the same, with the emotions and reactions filtered only through memory, not a writer's imagination, and therefore are even closer to truth.

At one point I would have been skeptical that "ordinary" people, interviewed about their own lives, could utter anything as profound, moving, or even truthful than the inventions of the greatest creative writers. I know better now. As the authors of another wonderful book based on oral histories (Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World) said, "We had learned from experience to trust the interpretive authority of ordinary people."

Of course, Studs Terkel is the element that transforms this book from a very powerful collection of primary sources into a work of history of literary quality. First of course, he is the one who found the people to interview (those who in the Depression who had been everyone from the struggling poor, to mob members, to government officials and social workers, to rich people who remember the New Deals with hostility), and who--obviously with consummate skill--persuaded them to speak. And then he cut and arranged his material, not as a straightforward narrative, or a chronological history of the Depression, or as a series of arguments, but as chapters of contrasting voices with common identifiable themes. The chapters themselves--I will need to re-read the book someday to understand how he ordered them, but after the first reading I have only the silly mystical idea that he couldn't have arranged them any other way.

In any other book I would have wanted a lot of information about how the author chose interviewees, conducted interviews, and compiled the material, so that I could evaluate it for bias. Terkel doesn't do this at all in Hard Times. He refers to the questions of what the book is for and how to evaluate its truthfulness in about two paragraphs at the very beginning. His own words are limited to this introduction (which mostly gives some of his own memories of the Depression) and a few italicized, conversational interview questions. Even the footnotes sometimes required to explain a detail are written as much as possible in the interviewee's own words.

Once I got into it, I didn't want Terkel to have explained himself. I figure I can read about his method in his autobiography (P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening). But in Hard Times, Terkel can just sit back and let the people tell their own stories, and that's exactly how it ought to be.(less)

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Oct 17, 2010 Colleen is currently reading it

Studs does his interviews in Chicago in a few years before he published this book in 1970. I was struck by the similarity between the years leading up to 1929 and the years before 2007. Hard times struck the midwest farmers in the teens. The stock market was just crazy - there would be no end to how much money you could make. But farmers were losing their land to the banks by the droves. The books delves into major and minor players - Alf Landon (ran against FDR), Sally Rand (fan dancing - balle...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Diana rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the better books I've read about the Depression. It's one thing to read a scholarly piece which analyzes the trends and mindsets of the era, but quite another to read the first hand accounts of the people who lived and experienced it. What I love the most about this book is that the interviews cover an amazingly diverse selection of people. Individuals from all walks of life, social backgrounds, geographic regions, political parties, and professions are represented here. It varies from de...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: chicago-books-authors, history

So I started reading about the Great Depression to put the current situation into perspective. But, this book just depressed the hell out of me though. It's a great book, it's full of incredible stories that would've been otherwise lost, but it can be tough to read at times. Studs did a great job of collecting stories from every different perspective, people who lost everything, people who benefitted, kids who weren't even born until after. It was not only interesting to learn so much about the...more

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Jun 20, 2009 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

These people are, of course, getting very old now and dying. I am especially interested in the treatment of women (teenagers)in the hobo camps along the railways, and would love to talk to one of these women.

The legend is, and I think it's recounted in Terkel's book somewhere, that the girls, who had to leave home and hit the rails (or roads), were protected from abuse by the men in the encampments, as a code of honor. Mess with a girl "hobo", you were persona non grata in the camps. (and in the...more

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Sep 09, 2011 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-history, journals-memoirs

Hard Times was first published in 1970 and contains interviews collected during the late 1960s. Over the span of several years, Terkel seems to have questioned anyone and everyone with whom he came into contact about their memories from the 1930s. He listened to and recorded the words of men and women who had been miners, union organizers, actors, politicians, social workers, farmers, migrant workers, stock brokers, preachers, prisoners, strippers, secretaries and bootleggers. He spoke to a weal...more Hard Times was first published in 1970 and contains interviews collected during the late 1960s. Over the span of several years, Terkel seems to have questioned anyone and everyone with whom he came into contact about their memories from the 1930s. He listened to and recorded the words of men and women who had been miners, union organizers, actors, politicians, social workers, farmers, migrant workers, stock brokers, preachers, prisoners, strippers, secretaries and bootleggers. He spoke to a wealthy white widow and to her immigrant maid; to the friends of Huey P. Long and to a former Pullman porter who would become the president of the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP. He interviewed men who helped craft New Deal policy and men who fought against it. Finding himself waiting in a taxi, he interviewed the driver. One interview occurred at 3 o'clock in the morning with both Terkel and his interviewee well inebriated. If his subjects had children around, he interviewed the children, too; college-age and younger, they were born after the Depression, but Terkel wanted to know what kinds of stories these kids had heard about the Depression, what they thought of their parents' experiences and how they felt that time period related to their own (or did not). Terkel's energy for simply listening seems to have been boundless. His sense of history as lived experience constituting multiple perspectives is obvious.

The great strength of Hard Times, and of oral history in general, is that it successfully represents the abundance of differing perspectives that comprise a time period. The book demonstrates that there exist as many points of view of the period as there are voices to speak them. And each one, rooted in actual human experience, bears validity. Each one supplies a unique outlook worth attending in order to even begin considering what we may learn from the Depression and how it relates to us now. No two stories are precisely alike. Some are worlds apart.

Interestingly, as the interviewees in Hard Times exhibit, the very act of telling their stories, of remembering and narrativizing, seems to invite them to analyze and historicize their own experiences by measuring them up against those of others. In a literal sense, these men and women are creating history as they speak. History develops in the telling of life perhaps even more than it does in the living.

Of course one pitfall of oral history lies in the subjectivity of this same intense historicizing. The stories told rely on the memories of human beings. Not only did Terkel ask these human beings to remember a time period over 30 years gone, but he asked them to talk about themselves. Naturally, the stories are emplotted the way these men and women have grown accustomed to thinking about their own lives, according to who they view as villains and heroes, what values they try to live by and what groups they identify with. The narratives represent what each individual wishes to remember about themselves, others and their country, which in turn represents how they wish to view themselves in their present.

Terkel allowed these people to speak for themselves, whether they demonstrate by it empathy or bigotry, expansiveness or small-mindedness, miserliness or generosity, animosity or understanding. The reader cannot help having his or her own response to these personal histories, as Terkel must have had, but his primary motive seems to have been that of an archivist, or of that rare creature I mentioned at the outset of this essay: the historian who studies a period for itself. And yet, as his interviewees told their stories, they naturally related their past experiences to their present. Of course, presumably in the interest of allowing their narratives to flow, Terkel edited out nearly all of the questions he asked his subjects. Perhaps he led them in this direction more than the reader can know.

Taken as a whole, the interviews in Hard Times render it problematic to make any one statement about the Depression, its causes, its effects, its characteristics or its meaning. Simultaneously, the obvious polyvalence of history allows anyone with an interest in doing so to uncover and perpetuate some viewpoint which will enlighten their present purpose (as displayed by the online articles I mentioned earlier). In order to feel any way about anything, we must choose a viewpoint from which to argue and find an opinion to support. We must make decisions about meaning and identity. And by performing this requisite act of choosing one viewpoint, we necessarily obscure others.

However, in another lesson of history that seems to me echoed especially in today's polarizing political discourse, this act of choice can periodically become twisted - by autocrats, propagandists, the power-hungry, the unimaginative and the intolerant. To obscure other viewpoints can, in manipulative hands, lead to a rejection of the very existence and integrity of other viewpoints. To behave as though we have not made a decision about meaning, as though there is only one possible meaning to arrive at, is dishonest and dangerous. Terkel's work as an oral historian combats just such irresponsible and lazy uses of history. It reads like a portrait of the great and polyglot American family, replete with favorite cousins as well as embarrassing uncles. You may wish some of these people did not comprise your heritage, but if you are an American they do. And there is nothing for it but to read and acknowledge, sometimes agreeing, other times growing angry, first rejoicing and now crying, and to find some story to tell yourself about yourself, perhaps some perspectives that change your own and that resonate even now that so many of these men and women are dead.
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Mar 28, 2013 Bob rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was really tough me for to get through. If he wanted to help people understand the depression better this book does not help. People being interviewed referred to groups that I had never heard of the author never bothers to explain what the group did or who they were. Teh section where he tried to interview younger people about it was a waste, I get it, younger people didn't know what the depression was.

Interviews with some of the New Deal crowd were interesting but too short.

Again ora...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Jay rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite history books. A big tangle of voices in contradicory, vibrant clamor, all summed up with an editorial attention above the empirical intelligence of everyone who survived the era. Terkel's skill in creating the book lets Americans tell other Americans how we've survived crisis, oppression, and despair in the past; it also dispells the heroic counter-factual narrative that it's easy to fall into about the Depression. "Things were much easier then-- Roosevelt was gutsy enough to...more

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May 08, 2012 Valerie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-history, science-disaster, owned, primary-sources, favorite-books-of-all-time

The story of the Great Depression as told by those who lived it and their children. I loved how Studs Terkel interviewed people from ALL aspects of life. You get to read about the millionaires who may or may not have caused the crash (depends on your political views) and how they were shocked at suddenly how all their wealth was gone. You get to read about the poor who were hit even harder by the depression. You even get to read about people who just didn't care. This is a must read for anybody...more

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Jul 26, 2011 John Harder added it

When reading this oral history of the great depression you need to keep in mind that Studs Terkel is a long time communist sympathizer. This no doubt affected his choices on whom he should interview. But to his credit there was at least some minimal effort to speak with both rational people and those who voted for Roosevelt.

This book is particularly valuable as the individual that were adults during depression are now food for worms. It provides a unique and personal perspective of a time that t...more

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Mar 27, 2009 Stop added it

Shelves: interviewees

Read the STOP SMILING interview with Studs Terkel:

BEHIND THE BILLBOARDS
By Danny Postel and JC Gabel

(This interview originally appeared in the STOP SMILING Chicago Issue)

Studs Terkel is “as much a part of Chicago as the Sears Tower and Al Capone,” a BBC journalist once remarked.

Indeed, just as tourists to the “city of the century” throng to the skyscraper's observation deck and make their way to one or another of the gangster's old haunts, many a writer has pilgrimaged to the Uptown home of Chica ...more

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Jul 30, 2009 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: will-read-again

An amazing book. Written in the 1970's, author Studs Terkel interviewed people from all walks of life who lived through the depression and documented their stories.

What is most remarkable/fascinating/scary is the parallels to today's economic crisis. Here are some quotes:

A highly respected Wall Street financier recalled; 'The Street had general confusion. They didn't understand it any more than anybody else."

"We thought American business was the Rock of Gilbraltar. We were a prosperous nation, a...more

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Nov 04, 2008 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Cindy by: Required reading for a social history class

Shelves: nonfiction, adult, young-adult

This seems like a perfect time to celebrate Studs Terkel! If only he had lived to see this night, although he must have seen it coming.

Studs Terkel in Hard Times provided a very precious slice of social history from the Depression. It is an extraordinary compilation of very personal and often very moving stories from the people who lived through the Depression and survived it to share their memories and impressions. These were stories from people from all economic, social, and political strata;...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Alix rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hard Times is a large collection of short first person accounts of the great depression. The stories include a wide range of experiences -- families that had no money during the depression, rich people who actually generated incredible wealth for themselves during the depression, rich people who lost most of what they had during the depression, early workers' union organizers...

The interviews themselves are wonderful, but as a complete volume, it reads slowly and has no feeling of flow. The stor...more

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Mar 25, 2010 Joan Colby rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an oral history told through many diverse voices about the Great Depression. What is interesting is how history repeats itself, particularly in political viewpoints. The downside is that, as with any oral history, that is large unedited, there is a lot of repetition, both of language and of topic. Still it should be required reading for those who fail to realize that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

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Feb 23, 2013 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this a lot. I wish there had been a little more contextual info given for each interview. I felt like half the time I would find out basic info like "this was in Detroit" halfway through an interview, and even though ages were given for a lot of the interviewees I had to keep calculating when they would have been born/how old they or their parents would have been during the depression. But a fascinating read in spite of those tiny complaints. One of the most interesting things for me was...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Lori Anderson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Absolutely fascinating. This book explained so much to me about a part of history I never learned. The oral histories of everyone from the poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich makes this book a must-read for history buffs.

Lori Anderson

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Aug 08, 2011 Lasohaney rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was such an amazing book. I'd never read a written documentary before, but after having read this book I would have gladly read more. This was one of my assigned books for summer homework for my Junior AP English class, and definitely the best one I had to read. It's gritty and *real.* Considering today's economic and political climate, it should probably be a required read.

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Jun 18, 2012 Anonka Dameron rated it 5 of 5 stars

read many years ago when I was but a child, I loved this tough hard
rough and ready to eat you alive world. Either be ready for it or fall
over and give up, obviously it was time to get ready and be tough, period no other options, thanks Studs for changing how i saw and found
and fought the world i was in as well.

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Apr 10, 2012 Susan Klinke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, nonfiction

(3.5) This book is for much more of a history buff than I am. I really liked the format of the book - interviews with people who had first hand experience of the Depression, many of whom were just everyday people. But after about 200 pages I had had my fill. If the book had ended at 200 or so pages I would have rated it 4.5. The interviews I liked best were with everyday people who had no particular status. I could have done with fewer interviews with activists, politicians, union leaders, etc....more

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Sep 15, 2011 Clare rated it 4 of 5 stars

Studs Terkel’s oral history of the Great Depression is an eye-opening work on a oft-simplified historical event; by simply including account upon account from those who lived through the event (and contrasting it with their children’s accounts), he provides a broad and nuanced look at the time period. Very good.

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Jul 13, 2009 Mel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-the-library, some-of-my-best-reads, non-fiction

I enjoyed this book a lot. It was like talking to old people about the depression and offered many different experiences and impressions of the time period. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history of the 1930's and the experiences many people had during this time. I also recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the politics that were happening during the 1930's. There are a lot of insights and stories about all the interesting things that were happening and many re...more

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Jan 03, 2009 beth anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

this book looks scary because of the size, but it is really many many little stories, some half a page long, about the depression. i love the personal stories what people and their families had to do to survive. and how they prayed there would never be another depression because people today couldnt handle it.

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Jun 21, 2012 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, memoir

In the 1960's, Studs Terkel asked Americans from all walks of life about their experiences during the Great Depression. Grouped by type of experiences - labor movement recollections, for example - the individual recollections give a broader view of the issues people faced during the depression. We hear the voices of day laborers as well as heads of industry, people whose fortunes fell and those whose rose.

It is this juxtaposition of views that makes Hard Times both vibrant and relevant, remindin...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Craig rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first book I read by Studs Terkel, and I thought it was great. The oral history presents all different perspectives. It was also interesting to compare how people are currently reacting to a financial crisis, as compared to the Depression many years ago.

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Nov 29, 2011 Justin rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book was okay but after a while in each chapter in got very repetittive. I didn't finish it but from what i read it wasn't all that exciting. I'm sure it was because it wasnt one of my favorite topics but it was just dull to me. hints the great depression.

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Feb 05, 2012 Gregory Frye rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a priceless history lesson for those who wish to escape the doom of repetition. So many parallels between then and now (I live in a country presently saturated with financial strife). In this oral history Terkel has gathered voices of people from EVERY facet of society, their stories, their admissions, their reflections. Some people jumped out of windows, others walked the streets with shame in their pockets. Workers organized unions. A number of individuals didn't even feel the Depressi...more

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About Studs Terkel

Terkel won the Pulitzer prize in 1985 for his interviews with ordinary people in such books as Working, The Good War, and Hard Times. Often called an Oral Historian, Studs Terkel preferred to be known for playing music on the radio.

More about Studs Terkel...

Books by Studs Terkel

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times

Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession

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“What I remember most of those times is that poverty creates desperation, and desperation creates violence.” — 2 people liked it

“It was in ’35—we had this campaign to raise a million tax dollars. In the town of Phillips, one evening, during a blizzard, I was met by a crowd of miners. They were given the day off and a stake to attend this meeting. They surrounded me and said this tax would cost six hundred of them their jobs. They were busted farmers and fortunately found a job in these Home Stake mines. I went back home feeling worried. But the tax was passed, and not a single miner lost his job.” — 2 people liked it

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