The best books about America’s toughest time: life in the dirty thirties

What I love about this novel is the transparent honesty of the children and the unshakeable solidity of their father, who provides a moral compass for their sleepy Alabama town in the depths of the hardest times anybody can remember. The book is filled with poignant details of place and time, and the dialogue is pitch perfect. If you haven’t read Mockingbird lately, please do. It’s the best first stop on a journey through the 1930s. Favorite quote: “Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

The early ‘30s were marked by the rise of Huey P. Long, Louisiana’s populist governor, senator, and cult leader whom FDR called “the most dangerous man in America.” In All the King’s Men, the character of Willie Stark is based on Long and gives us a richly detailed look into the labyrinthine politics of the times. Fiction, but painfully true, not just to Long and the ways he corrupted decent people but to our own political times, as well. Favorite quote: “Politics is a matter of choices, and a man doesn't set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You've made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price.”

I love Timothy Egan’s book for its clear-eyed and deeply compassionate look into the Dirty Thirties. Egan tells the stories of the people who survived the Dust Bowl: mothers sweeping the house with a shovel; fathers trying to rescue their livestock from the smothering soil drifts; children with dust pneumonia. This is a book about the way human greed and recklessness destroyed an abundant nature—a lesson for the climate changes we are facing. Favorite quote: “For all the horror, the land was not without its magic... the sky was open and embracing, the breeze only a soft whisper... Robin's egg blue was the color of mornings without fear. At night, you could see the stars behind the stars. Infinity was never an abstraction on the High Plains.”

I’m a huge fan of books that are packed with compelling details. In Since Yesterday, Frederick Allen covers everything about the Thirties, from fashion to food to politics, music, and movies—and everything in between. A powerful story, sometimes dark but rich with odd little treasures that will make you smile. I especially like the searchable digital edition. Example quote: “Dance orchestras were blaring ‘The Music Goes ’Round and ’Round.’ Major Bowes was the current radio sensation, so warmly did he inquire into the life histories of the yodelers and jews-harp-players on his Amateur Hour. At the movie houses Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were dancing nimbly in ‘Follow the Fleet.’ Seven-year-old Shirley Temple was becoming the rising star of Hollywood.”

Food history—why and how and what we eat—is one of my favorite topics. The first edition of Irma Rambauer’s The Joy of Cooking inspired 1930s American cooks to make an eight layer cake, a celery aspic, a chicken bisque, cinnamon toast, shrimp wiggle, and green peppers filled with macaroni. Recently widowed, Rombauer self-published the book to support her family—and thereby became a heroine for 1930s homemakers. Her Cheese Custard Pie, so far as I know, is the first recipe for quiche in an American cookbook. It is introduced with these memorable words: “In Switzerland we had a vile tempered cook named Marguerite” whose quiche varied with “her moods and her supply of cheese.” (I love recipes that tell us something about the cook.)