Two major historical events dominated the period from 1929 to 1949: the Great Depression and World War II. When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, economic hardship struck many American citizens. Over the next 10 years the economy fell into a deep depression, alleviated only by vast government expenditures on wartime materials manufactured in the 1940s. Meanwhile, World War II dominated the political arena. Most significantly, the development and implementation of the nuclear bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed the practice of warfare and international diplomatic relations forever, ushering in the arms and space race with the Soviet Union, also known as the Cold War.

 

This book is aimed at children in secondary school.

There are 287 pages in this book. This book was published 2009 by Facts On File Inc .

General editor Rodney P. Carlisle earned his B. A. in history from Harvard and both his M. A. and Ph. D in history from the University of California in Berkeley. He is a former chair of the history department at Rutgers University in Camden where he taught for more than 30 years specializing in 20th-century history. Carlisle is now professor emeritus there. He has written and edited many articles and more than 10 books on history, including The Thirties in Facts On File's Day by Day series