The Lean Years: A History Of The American Worker 1920-1933
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Before the New Deal reshaped the American social contract, there was a decade of hardship, broken promises, and quiet desperation — and Irving Bernstein's The Lean Years stands as the definitive chronicle of that forgotten struggle. Spanning the years 1920 to 1933, this meticulously researched work documents the lives of American workers caught between the gilded optimism of the Roaring Twenties and the catastrophic collapse of the Great Depression, detailing the broken wages, union suppression, mass unemployment, and the human cost of unchecked industrial capitalism. Bernstein writes with the authority of a seasoned labour historian and the empathy of a storyteller, weaving together economic data, political history, and first-hand accounts to construct a sweeping portrait of a society under pressure. His prose is both rigorous and deeply humane, illuminating how the structures of power — corporate, political, and social — conspired to keep working men and women from claiming their rightful share of American prosperity. A landmark work of social history, The Lean Years forces readers to confront a question that still resonates today: in a nation built on the promise of hard work, who truly benefits from the labour of its people?
Author: Irving Bernstein
Format: Paperback
Genre: American history
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Before the New Deal reshaped the American social contract, there was a decade of hardship, broken promises, and quiet desperation — and Irving Bernstein's The Lean Years stands as the definitive chronicle of that forgotten struggle. Spanning the years 1920 to 1933, this meticulously researched work documents the lives of American workers caught between the gilded optimism of the Roaring Twenties and the catastrophic collapse of the Great Depression, detailing the broken wages, union suppression, mass unemployment, and the human cost of unchecked industrial capitalism. Bernstein writes with the authority of a seasoned labour historian and the empathy of a storyteller, weaving together economic data, political history, and first-hand accounts to construct a sweeping portrait of a society under pressure. His prose is both rigorous and deeply humane, illuminating how the structures of power — corporate, political, and social — conspired to keep working men and women from claiming their rightful share of American prosperity. A landmark work of social history, The Lean Years forces readers to confront a question that still resonates today: in a nation built on the promise of hard work, who truly benefits from the labour of its people?