Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Our Top Suggested Reading and Film Picks – Unit Three
(Week 11 - Automobiles and Road Building)
Bailey, Beth L. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century
America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Traces the changes in premarital relationships between boys and girls, concluding that
the arrival of the car lead to the movement from courtship, which took place with the
girl’s family close by, to dating, which took place in cars or in groups of youths.
Berger, Michael L. The Devil Wagon in God’s Country: The Automobile and Social
Change in Rural America, 1893-1929. Hamden, CT: Archon Books: 1979.
A very entertaining book on the social backlash against the automobile as the “bedroom
on wheels.”
Berger, Michael, L. The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference
Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001.
A collection of essays discussing the history of the automobile industry in America and
the impact of cars on the social and cultural life of the country. Also contains extensive
bibliographies and reviews of current literature on automobiles.
Black, Edwin, Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted
the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.
Traces the development of energy use and control from ancient Greece to modern
America, arguing that automobile tycoons like Henry Ford, General Motors and Thomas
Edison effectively stifled the development of an affordable electric car. A revealing story
of corporate corruption and manipulation that may, if left unchanged, lead to massive
natural decay.
Flink, James J. America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910. Cambridge, MIT
Press, 1970.
Examines the reasons why Americans so readily accepted the automobile into their lives
and culture.
Flink, James J. The Car Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 1975.
A general history of the impact of automobiles upon American culture.
Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of
the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Gutfreund’s book examines how highways have transformed American communities and
the way in which Americans live and work.
Meeks, Harold A. On the Road to Yellowstone: The Yellowstone Trail American
Highways, 1900-1930. Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 2000.
Meeks provides an in-depth look at the development of America’s first transcontinental
highway systems, especially the Yellowstone Trail which ran from Plymouth Rock to
Puget Sound.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Scharff, Virginia. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
Examines the involvement of women in the development of automobiles and the effects
that cars had on Victorian ideas of proper womanhood; which includes many interesting
stories of women’s influence upon shaping the automobile industry’s notions of
appearance, safety, and comfort for their automobiles.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. and Fred L. Israel. Touring America Seventy-five Years
Ago: How the Automobile and the Railroads Changed the Nation: Chronicles from
National Geographic. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.
Published for a juvenile audience, this collection of articles from National Geographic
highlight the expansion of travel by automobile and railroad in the 1920s and its effects
on American society.
.
Film
Henry Ford: Tin Lizzy Tycoon, Biography and A & E Home Video, 2004, 50 minutes
A look at Ford’s life and the legacy of his Model T.
Modern Marvels: Assembly Line, The History Channel and A & E Home Video,
2001, 60 minutes.
Traces the evolution and development of the assembly line by following four generations
of Detroit assembly line employees. Shows how assembly lines, while creating cheap
mass-produced products, also led to labor conflict.
(Week 12 - The Great Depression in the Northwest)
Berg, Rebecca. The Great Depression in Literature for Youth: A Geographic Study
of Families and Young Lives: A Guide and Resource Book. Lanham: Scarecrow
Press: 2004.
A tertiary source that provides an annotated bibliography (by state) of memoirs, oral
histories, biographies, photograph collections, and other reference works. Also includes
a WPA guide for every state.
Bird, Caroline. The Invisible Scar: The Great Depression and What it Did to
American Life. New York: Longman, 1966.
A classic text that looks at the permanent psychological damage caused by the Great
Depression.
Dewing, Rolland. Regions in Transition: The Northern Great Plains and the Pacific
Northwest in the Great Depression. Lanham: University Press of America: 2006.
A dense, yet thorough analysis of the geographic, political, economic, and demographic
change during the Great Depression.
Leuchtenburg, William. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940. New
York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
A well-balanced look at the New Deal and Roosevelt’s attempts to ameliorate the
conditions of the Depression. Concludes that the New Deal was never an attempt to
remake the social order, but rather an attempt to protect the existing order.
O’Neill, Patrick G. and Kathleen O’Neill Allison. Popcorn in a Pillowcase. Victoria,
B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2006.
This interesting book recounts the childhood memories of the author growing up on
farmstead in Montana during the Great Depression.
Schwantes, Carlos A. "The Depression Decade.” The Pacific Northwest: An
Interpretive History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
This chapter in Schwantes’ sweeping history of the Pacific Northwest deals with the
decade between the crash of 1929 and the entry of the U.S. into WWII.
Stock, Cathrine McNicol. Main Street in Crisis: The Great Depression and the Old
Middle Class on the Northern Plains. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1992.
This important book looks at the changes brought to the “old middle class” made up of
artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants, by the Depression and the ensuing cultural crisis
of values and ways of life.
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1970.
A classic collection of oral histories on the Great Depression.
Vernon, James W. Tough Times and Hard Rocks: A Memoir of the Great
Depression. Camarillo, CA: Vernon Books, 2002.
Vernon wrote this memoir of life during the Depression which includes his experiences in
mining camps in Nevada and Montana and adventures hitchhiking and riding the rails.
Watkins, T. H. The Hungry Years: A Narrative History of the Great Depression in
America. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999.
Watkins tells the story of the Great Depression through the eyes of those who lived
through it, incorporating oral histories, memoirs, and stories from the local press.
Film
The Grapes of Wrath, Directed by John Ford, 1940. Starring Henry Fonda, Jane
Darwell.
Based on the John Steinbeck novel, this classic tells the story of a family who flees the
Dust Bowl of Oklahoma in hopes of work and a better life in California, only to find more
pain and struggle.
42nd Street, Directed by Lloyd Bacon, 1933. Starring Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels.
In a musical that combines both Depression issues and the era’s desire for escapist
films, 42nd Street tells the story of a Broadway production on which all the main
characters pin their hopes of recovering from economic crisis.
(Week 13 - New Deal for the Northwest)
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Cannon, Brian Q. “Power Relations: Western Rural Electrical Cooperatives and
the New Deal” in The Western History Quarterly, Vol. 31 No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp.
133-160.
An article demonstrating the central role of individuals in the central and northern
Rockies in implementing and shaping New Deal programs, specifically the goals of
theRural Electrification Agency.
Conkin, Paul K. The New Deal. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1992.
Part of the American History Series, this book provides an excellent introduction and
overview of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Cooper, Jr, John M. The Warrior and The Priest: Theodore Roosevelt and
Woodrow Wilson. Cambridge Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983.
A comparison of the similarities and differences between these two influential men.
Dorpat, Paul and Genevieve McCoy. Building Washington: A History of
Washington State Public Works. Seattle: Tartu Publications, 1998.
Includes information on public works of the Great Depression in Washington.
Larson, T. A. “The New Deal in Wyoming” in The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 38
No. 3 (August, 1969), pp. 249-273.
An article detailing the local politicians and Wyoming natives who helped shape the New
Deal in their state.
Lowitt, Richard, The New Deal and the West. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1984.
Traces the legislation of the New Deal and how it was implemented in the West and the
effects it had on the region.
Malone, Michael P. “The New Deal in Idaho” in The Pacific Historical Review, Vol.
38 No. 37 (August, 1969), pp. 293-310.
An interesting article by the current president of Montana State University which details
the late arrival and impact of New Deal public works projects.
Murphy, Mary, Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936-1942.
Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2003.
A beautiful volume that presents the New Deal photographs of some of the WPA
photographers working in Montana.
Patterson, James T. “The New Deal in the West.” The Pacific Historical Review 38,
no. 3 (1969): 317-327.
Patterson analyzes politics, opposition, and the lack of cooperation evident in western
states to New Deal policies and programs.
Sitkoff, Harvard. A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a
National Issue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Argues that American race relations changed during the New Deal as changes in
government, law, and ideas of race occurred that would later allow for the Civil Rights
movement of the 1960s.
Film
The Plow that Broke the Plains, Directed by Pierre Lorentz, 1936.
Companion to The River, this documentary examines the issues of environmental decay
and soil erosion during the Dust Bowl.
The Triumph of the Will, Directed by Leni Riefenstahl, 1935. Starring (so to speak)
Adolf Hitler.
This important piece of Nazi propaganda documents the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party
Nuremberg Congress. This film developed new film techniques and won numerous
German, European, and American awards. It has influenced films from the direct
response by Frank Capra, Why We Fight (1943), to Charlie Chaplin’s parody The Great
Dictator (1940), to the scene with Saruman’s Army in The Two Towers (2002).
(Week 14 - Rural Electrification)
Beaudreau, Bernard C. Mass Production, the Stock Market Crash, and the Great
Depression: The Macroeconomics of Electrification. Westport,
CT:
Greenwood Press: 1996.
An incredibly in-depth, and often daunting, economic analysis of the far-reaching effects
of electrification.
Brigham, Jay L. Empowering the West: Electrical Politics Before FDR. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Brigham examines the politics involved in rural electrification and the some of the
problems with turning the plan into reality.
Brown, D. Clayton. Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press: 1980.
A monograph studying the Rural Electrification Agency through both political and
economic lenses.
Cooke, Morris L. "The Early Days of the Rural Electrification Idea, 1914-1936."
American Political Science Review 42 (June 1948).
A relatively short essay that outlines the “genealogy of the rural electrification idea” and
its implementation between 1914 and 1936.
Cowen, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household
Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books,
1983.
In this work, Cowen argues that modern electrical appliances did not free women from
the drudgery of housework, but actually created more work because cleanliness
standards rose proportionally.
Doig, Ivan, Bucking the Sun. New York: Scribner Fiction, 1997.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Set in Montana, this novel tells the story of a family disrupted by the building of the Fort
Peck Dam.
Layman, William C. “River of Memory: The Columbia, Wild and Free”. Columbia,
The Magazine of Northwest History, 17.1 (Spring, 2003), pp 17-24.
This essay deals with the dying memory of an un-dammed Columbia.
Lears, T. J. Jackson. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and The Transformation
of American Culture, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Lears reveals that antimodernism, which took for in a focus on the exotic, the arts-andcrafts movement, and an obsession with spiritualism, was a prevalent and important part
of American culture.
Nye, David E. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 18801940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 1990.
The most popular work dealing with the myriad ways that electricity has transformed
America. Nye provides excellent anecdotes about the early power companies and the
unexpected effects of electrification.
Pence, Richard A. and Patrick Dahl. The Next Greatest Thing. Washington, D.C.:
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, 1984.
Provides text and photographs detailing the effects electrification had on rural America.
Tobey, Ronald C. Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical
Modernization of the American Home. Berkeley: University of California Press:
1996.
A study of the impact of New Deal policies upon electrical appliance ownership and how
electrification and housing were directed toward social goals. The use of many National
Housing Act loans to buy refrigerators in the 1930s is highlighted as refrigerated storage
revolutionized the American household.
Whithorn, Doris. Yankee Jim's National Park Toll Road and the Yellowstone Trail.
2nd ed. WAN-I-GAN Press, 2006.
This biography of Yankee Jim focuses on his battle with the Northern Pacific Railroad.
Film
The Price We Paid, Ray Young and Robert E. Pace, Media Services, Yakima Indian
Nation for the Confederated Colville Tribes Business Council, 1977, 20 minutes.
Oral histories of the impact of the creation of Lake Roosevelt on the local tibes.
They Made America, PBS, 2004, 240 minutes
From the steam engine to the search engine, inventors have changed the way we live in
and relate to the world. This documentary, based on the book of the same title,
examines the lives of important American inventors and asks why the United States
produced so many inventors.
(Week 15 - New Deal For Native Americans)
Deloria, Jr., Vine, ed., The Indian Reorganization Act, Congresses and Bills.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Historian Vine Deloria, Jr., has collected in this volume the records of the congresses
held between John Collier and various Indian tribes, presenting Collier’s plan (far more
extensive than the one that passed Congress) and the responses of indigenous people
nationwide.
Hauptman, Laurence M. “The American Indian Federation and the Indian New
Deal: A Reinterpretation” in The Pacific Historical Review, Vol.
52 No. 4
(Nov. 1983), pp. 378-402.
An interesting scholarly article on the brief existence of AIF, who sought to abolish the
Bureau of Indian Affairs and resist much of the Indian New Deal.
Kelly, Lawrence C. The Assault on Assimilation: John Collier and the Origins of
Indian Policy Reform. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
A biography of Collier’s early life, documenting how his ideas developed and his growth
into a firm supporter of cultural pluralism.
Koppes, Clayton R. “From New Deal to Termination: Liberalism and Indian Policy,
1933-1953.” Pacific Historical Review 46, no. 4 (1977): 543-566.
Koppes discusses the changes in federal policy toward Native Americans over a critical
twenty-year period, especially hinging on the administration of President Harry S
Truman.
McNickle, D’Arcy. “The Indian New Deal as a Mirror of the Future” in American
Indians in American History, 1870-2001. Edited by Sterling Evans. Westport, CT:
Praeger: 2002.
An essay by the renowned Native American leader who worked for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs during the Indian New Deal which offers profound insight into the aims, realities,
and contradictions of the program.
Parker, Dorothy R. Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D'Arcy McNickle.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
A thorough and interesting biography of McNickle, emphasizing his life in two cultures.
Olson, James S. and Raymond Wilson. Native Americans in the Twentieth
Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
A comprehensive overview of Native American history starting in the 1890s.
Philp, Kenneth R. Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Selfdetermination, 1933-1953. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press: 1999.
A history which focuses on the Native American reaction to the withdrawal of federal
supervision of Native American affairs beginning with the Reorganization Act.
Schrader, Robert Fay. The Indian Arts and Crafts Board: An Aspect of New Deal
Indian Policy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
Examines government support for and promotion of Indian arts and crafts , including the
problems that the Board faced.
Time Travelers: Teaching American History in the Northwest, 2007
Regional Learning Project, University of Montana
Taylor, Graham D. The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism: The
Administration of the American Indian Reorganization Act, 1934-45. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press: 1980.
A political history of the New Deal for Native Americans which has become the most
widely read book on the subject.