1932

A compelling account of a pivotal year in U.S. history.

Veteran journalist Martelle, author of The Madman and the Assassin and Blood Passion, among other titles, provides a fine account of the run-up to “one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.” He begins many chapters with excerpts from contemporary diaries, and readers will squirm at the level of suffering they reveal. The fact that many sufferers were white and middle class was a shock in a country historically indifferent to the sufferings of Black and working-class people. Inaction against the economic crisis was fostered by a political status quo long predating 1932, in which progressives and conservatives vied for influence in the Republican Party, and Democrats, who were strong in industrial northern states (including Franklin Roosevelt), frequently deferred to the reactionary South. Although the Depression and 1932 election feature prominently, Martelle’s coverage of lesser-known events enhances his vivid account. Like abortion today, Prohibition was so controversial that many politicians, including FDR, tried to avoid the subject. Conservatives (Hoover included) seemed unaware that Americans were growing tired of it, and Martelle delivers a long account of the repeal movement, largely led by the same women who fought for suffrage. Even readers aware of how badly Black Americans were treated in the Jim Crow South will be dismayed by the details. For example, Southern cities faced with growing unemployment fired their Black employees and replaced them with white workers, and white mobs attacked building sites and businesses to drive off Black workers and take their jobs. Martelle’s admiring depiction of FDR is appropriate for the president who faced and surmounted one of the nation’s greatest crises. Like many other historians, he portrays Hoover as an energetic technocrat with poor political skills overwhelmed by the economic collapse.

An expert portrait of a national turning point.