What We're Reading: Tracy

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Morris Dickstein.

If you're worried that we're headed for a second Great Depression, take comfort from this work, which details the seemingly endless cultural contributions, both high and low brow, made during this otherwise dark time in our country's history. Busby Berkeley musicals, film noir, art deco, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, big bands, WPA murals, screwball comedies, and Great American Novels entertained, uplifted, and distracted Americans while helping to shape the decade of the 1930s.