READING ANTICIPATION GUIDE: FROM HARDING TO HARD TIMES – BOOM, BUST AND THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION

1. In the column labeled Before Reading, indicate your initial response (true or false) to the statement.

2. After reading the chapters by Burton Folsom, Jr., Warren Cohen, and Peter Fearon answer the questions a second time and support your answers by citing evidence from one or more of the chapters.

Before Reading After Reading

______ The prosperity of the 1920s was a total ______

façade masking alarming economic weaknesses.

_______ Throughout the 1920s, the American government _______

wisely insisted that debtor nations pay what they

owed to the United States so as to keep US taxes

low.

______ Overall, the federal government was more _______

responsible for precipitating the Great

Depression than was Big Business

______ The Great Depression can be linked to inequities _______

in American society produced by American capitalism.

______ President Hoover’s policies illustrate that he was _______

out of touch with America’s economic challenges

and was ill-equipped to deal effectively with them.