Research Guides
This guide is for the Presidential Dream Course: "The Making Modern America: Discovering the Great Depression and the New Deal" offered in Fall 2015.
Below are some other research guides that will be helpful when you are conducting research.
Your required readings are listed below. Oklahoma: The Guide to the Sooner State is available online. The digital reader refers to material available on the D2L site under readings.
Freedom from Fear
by
Freedom From Fear tells the story of the New Deal's achievements, with out slighting its shortcomings, contradictions, and failures. It is a story rich in drama and peopled with unforgettable personalities, incl uding the incandescent but enigmatic figure of Roosevelt himself.
The Grapes of Wrath
by
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics. This Centennial edition, specially designed to commemorate one hundred years of Steinbeck, features french flaps and deckle-edged pages. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
On Reading the Grapes of Wrath
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In this compelling biography of a book, Shillinglaw delves five layers deep and more into The Grapes of Wrath by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck to explore the cultural, social, political, ecological, and creative impact as well as its enduring legacy. First published in April 1939, Steinbeck' Pulitzer Prize - and National Book Award-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. The story of their struggle remains eerily relevant today and stands as a portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, 'in the souls of the people.' One of today's foremost Steinbeck scholars writes an extended meditation on the influence of The Grapes of Wrath.