History

The Great Depression: A Diary

By Benjamin Roth. Edited by James Ledbetter and Daniel B. Roth. PublicAffairs. 256 pp. $24.95

If economists sound like party poopers in bailout-happy 2009, imagine how much more dismal the dismal science seemed to a struggling Youngstown, Ohio, lawyer in the 1930s. Benjamin Roth's "The Great Depression: A Diary" offers a firsthand account of hard times along the Mahoning River in short entries that brim with the frustration of a man trying to save his failing law practice. A fiend for macroeconomics who was more likely to list stock prices in his private journal than discuss his wife or children, Roth struggles with the same issues that vex Ben Bernanke today: inflation, protectionism and whether deficit spending really stimulates the economy. Like many other stiff-upper-lipped professionals of his generation, Roth is anti-interventionist, anti-whiner and anti-Roosevelt. (Turns out Obama's election wasn't exactly one-of-a-kind: "the Democrats will win [in 1932] because everybody wants a 'change,' " Roth writes.) Except for his patrician disgust with King Edward's decision to abdicate the British throne for the "twice-divorced" Mrs. Simpson and his occasional "long[ing] for normalcy," Roth withholds the personal take on poverty that made Studs Terkel's "Hard Times" and Ben Reitman's "Sister of the Road" cultural treasures.

"Diary" is a valuable document, but it offers underwhelming lessons about man's powerlessness before market forces.

-- Justin Moyer moyerj@washpost.com