Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, this novel tells the story of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land.

The gritty, compelling New York Times bestselling novel of star-crossed lovers and circus life, set in Depression-era USA

Bud (like a plant, not short for Buddy , as he tells everyone) is a motherless boy on the run. He's determined to find his father but doesn't know where to start. The only clue he has is a bunch of flyers about Herman E Calloway and his jazz band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression.

Told in the voice of 14-year-old Billie Jo Kelby, this work takes the reader on a journey to the heart of a family caught in the Oklahoma dust-bowl. It is the story of Ma, who sees the idea of herself burn away with every parched day, until she herself is consumed by fire.

Streetwise George and his childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But do dreams come at a price!

An oral history of the Great Depression, new paperback edition.

Offers a reinterpretation of the Great Depression. This title shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. It traces the agony of the New Dealers themselves.

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the American people: the Great Depression and World War II. This work tells the story of how Americans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedented calamities.

In the summer of 1936, Agee and Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. This book provides a record of the place, of the people who shaped the land, and of the rhythm of their lives.

The true story of three men and their dreams for a racehorse -- Seabiscuit -- that symbolised a pivotal moment in American history, as the 20th-century's greatest nation found the courage to bet on itself to win against the odds. Now a major motion picture directed by Gary Ross and starring Toby Maguire and Jeff Daniels.

The first in a two-book saga following the 1930s childhood of Joey and Mary Alice as they spend their summers with a formidable grandma in small-town Illinois. If Grandma isn't holding their nasty neighbours at gunpoint, she is doing a spot of poaching or catching the sheriff in his underwear.

Examines the 'gold-rush fantasy' in American psychology and describes its dire consequences.

It is Autumn, 1937, and although the Depression has lifted, Mary Alice must leave Chicago to live with her Grandma Dowdel. Because her brother has grown up and left home, Alice is alone with her grandmother but, despite feeling homesick, she soon finds she has much in common with the old lady.

Spindly redhead Lydia Grace Finch loves writing letters almost as much as she loves gardening. Packing a tiny suitcase and armed with a packet of seeds, she goes to stay with her uncle in the grey city. Gradually she brings warmth and colour to his bakery and the people who work there.

Lee Chong, the astute owner of the well-stocked grocery store, is also the proprietor of the Palace Flophouse that Mack and his troupe of good-natured 'boys' call home. Dora runs the brothel with clockwork efficiency and a generous heart, and Doc is the fount of all wisdom.

The ninth novel by Anita Shreve.

Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, this work explores with humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

'We have no choice of what colour we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.' The Mississippi of the 1930s was a hard place for a black child to grow up in, but still Cassie didn't understand why farming his own land meant so much to her father.

Subtitle: How Roosevelt and his New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression.

In 1938, Francis Phelan, a murderer, is reduced to flop-houses and hobo jungles. Returning to Albany at the end of the Depression, he roams the familiar streets with his hobo pal Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and present.