The Dirty Thirties

In Happyland, Curtis McManus contends that the "Dirty Thirties," actually began much earlier and were connected only peripherally to the Depression itself.

In this book, Brinkley will take you through a short history of the "Dirty Thirties."

In October 1935, three Doukhobor farm boys embarked on a violent trail of robbery and murder that stretched from Manitoba to Alberta. By the time the spree ended near Banff, seven people were dead, including the fugitives and four law-enforcement officers. For the next 70 years, these "farm-boy killers" held the distinction of being the RCMP's deadliest adversaries, yet many questions about the shocking case remained unanswered. This gripping narrative reveals surprising new details about the tragic events as it chronicles the disastrous impact of the Great Depression on the young killers and the lawmen who faced them down.

Over 1.5 million Canadians were on relief, one in five was a public dependant, and 70,000 young men travelled like hoboes. Ordinary citizens were rioting in the streets, but their demonstrations met with indifference, and dissidents were jailed. Canada emerged from the Great Depression a different nation. The most searing decade in Canada's history began with the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with the Second World War. With formidable story-telling powers, Berton reconstructs its engrossing events vividly: the Regina Riot, the Great Birth Control Trial, the black blizzards of the dust bowl and the rise of Social Credit. The extraordinary cast of characters includes Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who praised Hitler and Mussolini but thought Winston Churchill "one of the most dangerous men I have ever known"; Maurice Duplessis, who padlocked the homes of private citizens for their political opinions; and Tim Buck, the Communist leader who narrowly escaped murder in Kingston Penitentiary. In this #1 best-selling book, Berton proves that Canada's political leaders failed to take the bold steps necessary to deal with the mass unemployment, drought and despair. A child of the era, he writes passionately of people starving in the midst of plenty.

In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms.Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.

The Great Depression & Dirty Thirties is brought to you by Reading Through History. This is a collaborative effort of two Oklahoma classroom teachers with nearly thirty years of teaching experience at the secondary level. It includes 162 pages of student activities dealing with the causes, figures, events, and consequences of the Great Depression. The workbook is divided into ten complete units and includes answer keys for each activity. This is the go-to resource for any U.S. history teacher in need of information or student activities related to the 1930s. This resource manual is sure to be a perfect fit for any classroom, middle school or above, in need of resources for the Great Depression, Dust Bowl, or the 1930s. There are 40 reading lessons in all, and each has several pages of student activities to accompany the reading, including multiple choice questions, guided reading activities, vocabulary exercises, and student response essay questions. Topics include the causes of the Great Depression, Black Tuesday, Hoovervilles, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, The New Deal, the Dust Bowl and much, much more!

With this book, Cynthia Comacchio presents the first historical overview of domestic life in Canada, showing how families have both changed and remained the same, through transitions brought about by urbanization, industrialization, and war.