The experience of crisis during the 1930s engendered particular ideas about history and the relationship between present, past, and future. Alfred Haworth Jones has argued that the period was marked by the search for a usable past. Suggesting that "in times of complacency, men live primarily in the present," (712) he remarks that the Depression generation "felt drawn towards history- 'driven,' in John Dos Passos' words- 'by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today'" (715). It is important to note that there were many public historical projects during the period that were large in scale, and government-sponsored. This work stands as testimony to the magnitude of this pressure to construct a usable past, and how public history interacts with the project of nation-building.

• Juliet Gorman, May 2001 •

If you'd like to read more about the project of nation building, you should visit the discussion of culture and nationalism during the Thirties. You can, however, check that out later and go on to see how ideas about history played out in the New Deal public historical projects, like the Federal Writers' Project...