Start here to learn more about the events discussed in this chapter.
Kristen Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (2009). Discusses women and the New Deal years as seen through the life and career of an important reformer.
Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Times (2013). A powerful explanation of the New Deal’s racial politics.
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression (1984) and Down & Out in the Great Depression (1983). The first is an excellent overview of the depression and the New Deal; the second contains letters written by ordinary people.
James F. Simon, FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle over the New Deal (2012). Shows the legal controversies surrounding FDR’s expansion of the state.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939); Josephine Herbst, Pity Is Not Enough (1933); and Richard Wright, Native Son (1940). Classic depression-era novels.
For extensive collections of 1930s materials, see the “New Deal Network” at newdeal.feri.org; government-commissioned art at archives.gov/exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts; and the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project at memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml.