Nobody's Burden: Lessons from the Great Depression on the Struggle for Old-Age Security - Softcover

Using an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the construction and experience of (old-age_ burden and dependency in depression era America and beyond. Fourteen scholars from a range of disciplines came together over two years to read and discuss the same materials and to create, successfully, `a new object which belongs to no one'. Even with a multiplicity of perspectives, the book achieves coherence, with many connections across the chapters and an overarching desire to investigate, problematise, and overcome discourses of burden and their effects. This is a book of wide relevance, not just for social gerontologists in their many guises, but to anyone seeking a model of how deep and coherent interdisciplinary work can be managed. * Journal of Ageing & Society *

Nobody's Burden: Lessons on Old Age from the Great Depression is the first book-length study of the experience of old-age during the Great Depression. Part history, part social critique, the contributors rely on archival research, social history, narrative study and theoretical analysis to argue that Americans today, as in the past, need to rethink old-age policy and accept their shared responsibility for elder care. A must read for historians, gerontologists, and social workers.