As Americans anxiously watch the stock market’s daily fluctuations, the rising unemployment rate, housing foreclosures and the scandals that have rocked the financial world, fear of another Great Depression hovers in our minds. The Gilder Lehrman Institute has asked a group of six distinguished contributors to examine the particular circumstances that created and surrounded the Depression of the 1930s, the impact of policies chosen and paths untaken. They remind us that many of the institutions, programs, regulations, and safeguards in place today were born in the crucible of an earlier era.

There could be no better time to re-examine the Great Depression and the New Deal than 2009.

Visit History Now at www.historynow.org, or go to the links below for each feature:

The Great Depression: An Overview
by David M. Kennedy
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian.html

The WPA: Antidote to the Great Depression?
by Nick Taylor
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian2.html

The Hundred Days and Beyond: What did the New Deal Accomplish?
by Anthony Badger
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian3.html

Women and the Great Depression
by Susan Ware
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian4.html

The New Deal, Then and Now
by Alan Brinkley
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian5.html

Are Artists “Workers”?
by Elizabeth Broun
http://www.historynow.org/03_2009/historian6.html

All previous issues of History Now are available here: http://www.historynow.org/past.html