The Great Depression: A Diary
The Great Depression: A Diary
The real-time diary of Benjamin Roth, a young Youngstown, Ohio lawyer who, two years into the Great Depression, began recording what he saw happening to the economy and the people around him. Edited posthumously by his son Daniel B. Roth and James Ledbetter (PublicAffairs, 2009), it covers roughly 1931–1941 — a ground-level, contemporaneous account rather than a retrospective history.
Why it’s on the list: A primary-source ledger of how an ordinary observer experienced a financial collapse as it unfolded — the kind of contemporaneous record Morgan Housel prizes (he also loves reading old newspapers for the same reason).
Where I saw it: Recommended by Morgan Housel on Thinking and Walking — Morgan Housel (Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Invest Like the Best, Ep. 4); tagged #Journals in the source.
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