The Deppressing Depression

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Much like the Gilded Age readings that we have done in class, “Dusty Volumes: Environmental Disaster and Economic Collapse in the 1930s” supports the idea that its subject matter has not been studied enough by the academic community. This piece of work is a review of the books The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression by Paul Bonnifield and Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster. Clayton R. Koppes, the author of this review, praises the two authors for their thesis of the dust bowl but notes that their shortcomings in establishing a more theoretical context. Charles W. Calhoun, author of “Moving Beyond Stereotypes of the Gilded Age” also sought to achieve the abolition of stereotypes and to provide evidence of others who were rethinking the history of the gilded age.
Slee72897 had cited a quote by Popkin concerning the way historians look at history and historiography. They cite the “necessity of study to understand the past deeper and more insightfully. He also says that historiography challenged ‘historians to look at the past from new angles’ because ‘historiographical disagreements help keep the discipline alive’ (Popkin 8).” I believe that this relates to the Koppes review as it is also saying that we need to look beyond the stereotypes of the dust bowl to discover more interesting and important characteristics that only can occure when looking at a source with more “explicit, and more developed, theory” (Koppes 540).
As for the video we watched, it definitely captured what I believe was the depression era attitude. It was depressing and many people were nervous because they had no knowledge of what was to come or when the drought would end.

 

 

 

Just a side note, their choice in music creeped me out and I don’t know why.