The Hungry Years Summary

Meanwhile, for The Hungry Years discussed extremely wide range of aspects support by vast amount sources, which made this book is inspiring to readers who wanted to understand more about Great Depression because a lot of the issues were described by Watkins. Watkins collected ideas from different other publications to come up with this book, so that life of Americans from various industries could be revealed by the readers. The whole book is enriched by real stories of people's hard life, wandering at night to find shelter, losing their home and belongs, the response of the labors, how general public response to Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Yet, this could also the weakness of this book, because Watkins did not include oral histories that

He mentioned that understanding history through arts is so different with looking at oral history and statistics, because apart from recording and understanding feeling of the writer, arts are also used to act as a relief and escape for readers from the misery life they were living. Writers bring their audience into the world that they build up, so that audiences are experiencing by themselves, which is a kind of pleasure that could not be provided by reading oral history and statistics. Therefore, aside from portraying the gloomy reality that showed what people lack, sometimes they would show what people need to give them hope and make them feel better while they were enjoying the virtual

He described the economic by showing plentiful of numbers and statistics compare the earnings of different companies and industries. Politically, he mentioned about the CPUSA, radicalism and the labor movement, as well as the social aspect about the life of the immigrants like the sharecroppers. The Hungry Years is a good book to describe the Great Depression and to give a general understanding to readers how hard Americans' lives were and what impact were brought to them. However, I found this book contradicted to one of the intensions of Watkins to write this book. He mentioned at the beginning of the book that, ""The Hungry Years" is to pay tribute to those who lived through these times by offering a portrait of the era that is as rich and full and true as I can make it.". I think if this book could include oral history or interviews with people lived through that period would be a good way to enhance the content, and may be a better way to pay tribute to the people who struggle through that period. As Watkins expressed, "it is the people in whom I find the heart of the depression story.", yet he did not include any of the real stories of people's life he had interviewed by himself, this seems to me contradicting to his intention to write this research. I think only collect oral history from other publication would be too narrow if the Watkins aimed to