This volume takes the reader from the crash of the stock market to the crash of bombs in Poland. The journey was a monumental one for Americans - a time of bitterness and despair, of failure and hunger and want, but also of rebirth. The New Deal was part of a social evolution, a recreation of the American experiment. In popular culture, too, the decade was beginning with 1929 saw a new flowering in music, in radio, and in the movies, now equipped with soundtracks. The author's sources were the files of the "New York Times" and the leading periodicals of the day, histories, memoirs, diaries and government reports.