The Great Depression: A Diary

Why it’s on the list: The real-time diary of a young Youngstown, Ohio lawyer who, two years into the Depression, began recording what he saw happening to the economy and the people around him — a ground-level, contemporaneous account of a financial collapse as it unfolded, rather than a retrospective history.

Where I heard about it

• Morgan Housel — recommended it on Thinking and Walking — Morgan Housel (Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Invest Like the Best, episode 4), as the kind of contemporaneous record he prizes — he also reads old newspapers for the same reason.

About this edition

By Benjamin Roth, covering roughly 1931–1941 of the Great Depression; edited posthumously by his son Daniel B. Roth and James Ledbetter (PublicAffairs, 2009).

Connections

• Benjamin Roth — author/diarist
• Morgan Housel — recommended it on the podcast
• Thinking and Walking — Morgan Housel — where the recommendation surfaced
• Great Depression — the period the diary records