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Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years
Radical Visions and American Dreams Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years Author:Richard H. Pells The 1930s provide many Americans, particularly the young, with an important frame of reference -- one which author Richard Pells suggests could profitably be examined more closely. This book points to the understanding that the intellectuals of that time had, consciously or unconsciously, of their relation to the past. It emphasizes ... more »that on a variety of levels -- political, economic, social, intellectual -- the principles and programs of these years had their roots in the Progressive era and in the 1920s.
The political and literary heritage of the 1930s can be appreciated more properly if the impact of the Depression on that decade is recognized -- what those times meant to the people actively changing them. From this perspective, the author scrutinizes then-current political and social theory and literary expression, illuminating the dynamism and demise of a legendary era.
“It is a rich, satisfying, well-written book, which hangs together and tells an important story that will be eagerly read by a whole generation of college students. Grant me some exaggeration in the last phrase, but I do think that the Pells book does for the 1930s, in a more comprehensive and scholarly way, what Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return did for the 1920s. It is not only an analysis but also an astute critical assessment of how the intellectuals of the thirties understood and tried to change their world, and what it did to them." — John Higham« less