In the mid-1930s, slumped deep in economic depression and faced with ever-worsening news from Europe, Americans turned to self-help with a sharp new thirst. The decade, bookended by the Crash and the War, was a period of seeking, searching and struggling, as is clear from the titles turned bromides like How to Win Friends and Influence People and Life Begins at Forty that still pepper our vocabulary. The decade’s most successful self-help books emphasized the power of the mind and the will to rise above the burden of circumstance. Unable to stabilize the market or the world, readers turned inward and saw themselves anew—as fixable machines, captives of an unbridled will or endlessly renewable resources.
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