A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness - and a Trove of Letters - Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression

by Ted Gup

Overview

"A wonderful reminder that economic hardship can bring suffering but can also foster compassion and community." -The Boston Globe

In hard economic times like these, readers will find bestselling author Ted Gup's unique book uplifting as well as captivating. Inside a suitcase kept in his mother's attic, Gup discovered letters written to his grandfather in response to an ad placed in a Canton, Ohio, newspaper in 1933 that offered cash to seventy-five families facing a devastating Christmas. The author travels coast to coast to unveil the lives behind the letters, describing a range of hardships and recreating in his research the hopes and suffering of Depression-era Americans, even as he uncovers the secret life led by the grandfather he thought he knew.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143120001
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/25/2011
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	513,439
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.87(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ted Gup is the author of the bestseller The Book of Honor and of Nation of Secrets. He is a professor and chair of the journalism department at Emerson College. A former investigative reporter for The Washington Post and Time, he has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek, GQ, Slate, and Salon.com.

Editorial Reviews

On a cold winter seventy-seven years ago, a small ad appeared in a Canton, Ohio newspaper. Instead of goods for sales, it offered ten dollars, no strings attached, to 75 local families in distress. To receive this Depression Era manna, readers were asked to submit letters describing their down-and-out hardships and needs. Their benefactor, who used a pseudonym in the classified, was Sam Stone, the grandfather of Ted Gup, the author of this book. When Gup discovered a suitcase full of these letters, he began a quest to discover what had happened subsequently to these supplicants and, just as importantly, what had motivated his granddad to become such a real life benefactor to so many strangers. The paperback edition is updated with a new postscript. A NOOK Book edition of the hardcover is also available: 9781101444634, $12.99.

The author finds a huge box of letters to his father, all written in December 1933. The father had placed an anonymous ad in the Canton, Ohio, newspaper offering to send $10 to some worthy readers who applied. The heartfelt supplications for help became the focus of this audiobook, a collection of the requests felt to be the most demonstrative of the zeitgeist, the social mores, and the hardship at America’s lowest ebb. Narrator Mark Deakins's lusterless and dispirited treatment adds to the Depression’s depression. As he switches from the author’s supporting information to quoting the revealing and sincere applications, one can sense that Deakins's interpretation capitalizes on the letters’ sadness. The desperate pleas summarize the hopeless attitudes on that Christmas as no discourse could do. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2010 - AudioFile