The Hungry Years by T H Watkins

The Hungry Years by T H Watkins

"A big-hearted, abundant narrative . . . Watkins draws compelling portraits of people oscillating between despair and hope and a political culture in the midst of historic transformation."
--The Washington Post Book World

It was the worst of times and the best of times. It was an era of unprecedented crisis and a time of unprecedented courage. In a single, comprehensive volume, The Hungry Years tells the story of the Great Depression through the eyes of the people who lived it. Less concerned with the power brokers in Washington than with the daily struggles of ordinary people at the grassroots across America, it draws on little-known oral histories, memoirs, local press, and scholarly monographs to capture the voices of men and women in a time of extreme crisis. The result is a richly detailed narrative that traces the stages of the disaster chronologically without losing touch with the personal wounds it inflicted or the ways in which people responded.

Humane and compassionate, brilliantly researched, full of story and anecdote, The Hungry Years puts the reader at the very heart of the maelstrom that was the American depression.

Before his death in 2000, Watkins was a well-known environmental writer and historian. He was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. He was Wallace Stegner Distinguished Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University at the time of his death, and the CU-Boulder Center of the American West presented him with the Wallace Stegner Award posthumously. He penned nearly 300 pieces for journals such as National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and released 28 books.