This 1988 book focuses on the real puzzle of 1930s America: why did the economy fail to recover from the downturn of 1929–33? The author presents a convincing case that there were important long-run tendencies within the economy that are crucial to understanding this failure. From a wealth of detail about individual industries emerges a bold thesis about the interwar economy that emphasizes both cyclical and secular factors and shows that some sectors of the economy demonstrated technological dynamism during the 1930s. His approach cuts across the more traditional explanations which have been for the most part tests of economic theories rather than historical explanations of the depression.