Depression Era

2013 · Daniel James Brown · 404 pages · Nonfiction / Sports

The Boys in the Boat rows nine working-class Washington students into the 1936 Berlin Olympics and became one of the decade's most beloved nonfiction books doing it. Daniel James Brown builds the story on Joe Rantz, a boy abandoned by his family who found in an eight-oared shell the belonging life had refused him, and the book's evocation of swing, the transcendent state where eight rowers become one motion, gives sports writing one of its loveliest ideas. The prose reaches golden-hour lyricism more often than some readers' tolerance allows and the Nazi pageantry stays backdrop. The final race still stops hearts on schedule.

2001 · Laura Hillenbrand · 399 pages · Nonfiction / Sports

Seabiscuit resurrects the crooked-legged racehorse who became Depression-era America's favorite underdog, and Laura Hillenbrand's debut set the modern standard for sports nonfiction in the process. The book braids three broken men, a silent trainer, a half-blind jockey, a grieving owner, around the horse that remade them, and its match-race centerpiece against the aristocratic War Admiral remains one of narrative nonfiction's great sustained sequences. Racing-detail density asks patience in stretches and the opening chapters build slowly. What Hillenbrand assembles from the archives is the reason the genre's shelf looks the way it does now.

2003 · 2 Seasons · HBO · Fantasy, Drama, Mystery

Carnivale is one of the most visually stunning and atmospherically rich shows HBO ever produced, a Depression-era supernatural drama that built its mythology with patience and precision across two mesmerizing seasons. Daniel Knauf's creation features some of the finest production design in television history, with Clancy Brown delivering a performance as the sinister Brother Justin that commands every scene he inhabits. The slow pacing and dense mythology tested viewer patience, and the cancellation after two of a planned six seasons means the story remains permanently unfinished. But what exists is unlike anything else on television, a haunting and beautiful piece of work that rewards viewers willing to meet it on its own terms.