Modernity and the Great Depression

Explores how the worst economic, social, and political crisis in the last century created the space for a national conversation about the ideals of modernity order, planning, and reason.

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Order, planning, and reason—in the depths of the Great Depression, with the nation teetering on the brink of collapse, this was what was needed. And this, Kenneth J. Bindas suggests, was what the ideas and ideals of modernity offered—a way to make sense of the chaos all around. In Modernity and the Great Depression, Bindas offers a new perspective on the provenance and power of modernist thought and practice in early twentieth-century America.