"It's my sister's turn to eat," a hungry child tells her teacher. Quotes like that one bring home what it was like to be young and poor in Depression America. This stirring photo-essay combines such unforgettable personal details with a clear historical overview of the period and black-and-white photos by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and many others. As Freedman says, these images "convey in human terms the true meaning of economic statistics." His signature plainspoken prose does that, too, on every spacious, double-page spread, whether he is focusing on differences of race and class or on child sharecroppers, factory workers, migrant farm laborers, or boxcar kids.