"This book is part of a new generation of work on the events of the 1920s and 1930s, one that provides a gestalt view of this period. As such, the many events that have until now been viewed as unrelated, are viewed as parts of a greater whole, namely the introduction of a new power drive...

We argue for the resurrection of an old idea: electricity use as an indicator of U.S. economic activity. Our analysis relies on associations - the 40-year correlation between growth rates in real GDP and electricity use can be as high as 89% - and intuition. Electricity use and economic...