great depression | Wright's Writing

Sep 25, 20222 min read

A free copy of my book

Last summer I published the book version of my Ph.D. dissertation, bearing the ungainly title Popular Radicalism and the Unemployed in...

Jun 26, 202149 min read

On the inhumanity of Illinois's government in the 1930s

In case anyone is interested in the history of the Great Depression, particularly in Chicago, here's an excerpt from a chapter of my...

Jun 10, 202122 min read

Introduction to my forthcoming book

If all goes well, I'll be publishing a book sometime in the not-too-distant future. It'll be called something like Popular Radicalism and...

Sep 4, 202035 min read

The Workers' Bill

Here's the last section of chapter 6 of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Depression. The previous two sections are...

Sep 3, 202054 min read

On the Unemployed Councils and the Chicago Workers' Committee

The last chapter of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression is, I think, more interesting than the...

Aug 23, 202025 min read

The radical dimensions of mass consciousness, part 2

Here's the sequel to this post, from the last chapter of my Ph.D. thesis. It's just an excerpt. The main point of it is to argue against...

Aug 21, 202053 min read

Homeless men in the Great Depression

Here's another over-long blog post. It's a chapter from my dissertation, on homeless men during the Great Depression. I'm not sure it's...

Jun 16, 20202 min read

Primary sources on Communists and the unemployed during the Great Depression

While writing my PhD dissertation a few years ago ("Down But Not Out: The Unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression"), I...

Jun 13, 20206 min read

Gender norms in a Chilean copper mine

[This was supposed to be a short outline for a student presentation I had to give. So excuse the roughness. Here are more book reviews.]...

Nov 17, 20161 min read

A Marxist history of World War II

I recently read a book by Chris Bambery called The Second World War: A Marxist History (2014) and decided it was good enough to take...

Feb 22, 20152 min read

The coming great depression

The following is a resolution proposed at a Chicago conference of the Communist Party’s Unemployed Councils in 1930, in the context of...