Reading during the Great Depression
Recently National Public Radio broadcast a piece about looking through old issues of Publishers Weekly, the trade magazine that’s been around since 1852. Maureen Corrigan studied issues from 1933 to see what impact the Great Depression was having on readers of the day. As is the case now during our severe recession, public library circulation was up, and library users were reading similar types of books to today’s best sellers. For example, in place of today’s hot vampire books, such as the Twilight series, there was The Werewolf of Paris. Books about the economy were hot, too, and included Maryland Senator Tydings’ Counter-Attack, "a bold, sound, feasible plan" to end the Depression. One disturbing ad from July of that year was for Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf, listed as a "stirring autobiography [in which] you will find Hitler's own story of his meteoric rise from obscurity to world-wide fame." Click here for the full audio.