Anybody Can Do Anything

by Betty MacDonald

Overview

The author of The Egg and I continues her hilariously candid memoir series as she enters the job market at the worst possible time—the Great Depression.

“The best thing about the Depression was the way it reunited our family and gave my sister Mary a real opportunity to prove that anybody can do anything, especially Betty.” So begins Betty MacDonald’s singular chronicle of trying to make ends meet amid the worst economic downturn in American history.

After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062672247
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	201
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

A longtime resident of Washington State, Betty MacDonald (1908-1958) authored four humorous, autobiographical bestsellers and several children's books, including the popular Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books.

Table of Contents

1. “Anybody Can Do Anything Especially Betty”

2. What’s a White Russian Got?

3. “Mining Is Easy”

4. “So Is Lumber”

5. “Nobody’s Too Dull or Too Short for My Sister”

6. “I Won’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me”

7. “Aren’t We Going to Recognize Genius?”

8. “You Name It, Betty Can Do It”

9. “All the World’s a Stage and by God Everybody in This Family Is Going to the Foreign Movies and Like Bach”

10. Nightschool

11. Bills! Bills! Bills!

12. Bundles for Bards

13. “Now Listen, Mother, It’s Only a Fifteen Minute a Day Program”

14. “Let Nothing You Dismay”

15. “Just Like Flying” 16. “Hand Me That Straitjacket, Joe—the Government”

17. “Anybody Can Write Books”

Editorial Reviews

"Included in bestselling book 1,000 Books to Read before You Die: A Life-Changing List by Jim Mustich."

From the Publisher

"Improbably funny."

Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue

"Betty MacDonald endured for me. This was because she was funny. No, that’s not quite right. Betty MacDonald was comic. As I became a writer myself, I studied her, trying to figure out just how she did it. . . . What MacDonald achieves in Anybody Can Do Anything is . . . a finely observed journalistic record of her time. . . . The message that MacDonald had sent me is one of sufficiency. The homely, she says is more than enough. There’s a clue, of course, right there in the title. It’s been telling me since I was a girl, right up through the time I became a writer myself. Anybody can do anything. Even this. Even you."

Claire Dederer