The Great Depression

Two books by different historians paint a largely similar picture of the Great Depression of the 1930s, but have quite different attitudes about this period. The Age of Extremes, The Short Twentieth Century 1914 - 1991, written by Eric Hobsbawm, who experienced the depression first hand, exaggerates somewhat the social suffering of this period. Whereas Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics 1929 - 1939 was written by two much younger historians, John Stevenson and Chris Cook, whose lives …

…the depression. While two younger historians, Cook and Stevenson, who did not live through this period have no personal bias toward the depression's effects on society, good or bad, and can provide an impartial account of the period based on the facts. Bibliography: Hobsbawm, E 1994, Age of Extremes, The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 Abacus, London. Stevenson, J & Cook, C 1994, Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics, 1929-1939, 2nd edn, Longman Group, United Kingdom.