The Great Depression" is made up of newspaper articles and transcripts of reports made at government committee hearings made during 1929-1934. There are six case histories about the lives of "ordinary people" during the worst of the Great Depression and how they survived. This book gives a good idea of how the Great Depression affected people from every class and circumstance. This book doesn’t get into what caused the Great Depression or what was done on the national scale to get out of it except in how those things affected people on a personal scale.

Topics covered are unemployment numbers, wage decreases, ways attempted to earn money after a job was lost, relief measures by the government, malnourishment in children, vagrants and migratory workers, bank failures, stock drops, the fear of a violent revolt against the government, and how the depression affected the farmers, middle class, industrial workers, teachers, public schools, and college students.