Films for the Humanities and Sciences: During the 20th century, post-World War I prosperity gave way to massive droughts, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. This program describes how the U.S. went from boom to bust and the ensuing political and economic adversities that followed, by focusing on several families who lived through those years: the Manoffs, Russian immigrants who settled in New York City; the Blankenships and the Woldorfs, who survived the Oklahoma Dust Bowl by migrating to California; Malta-born Joe Mifsud and Georgia sharecropper Dave Moore, who found their separate ways to Detroit to work at and later reform the mighty Ford Motor Company; and the Peabodys, direct descendents of the original New England colonists. From this kaleidoscope of personal stories, the variety of experiences during this era reveals an America that did not always live up to its promise of peace and prosperity.