As the United States teeters on the brink of a severe economic downturn, many citizens have begun looking back at the Great Depression and wondering if it’s about to happen again. An economic downturn is not necessarily a depression. When students hear the word depression, they immediately conjure images of breadlines, migrant workers, dust bowls, and downtrodden individuals. The mechanisms of a depression, its causes and effects, and how it develops into a worldwide situation are clearly laid out and informatively explored. The Great Depression is used as an illustrative thread running throughout the book to bring compelling, vivid life to the principles discussed. Other notable depressions throughout history are reviewed. While stressing that depressions are rare and unusually extreme instances of the ordinary downward movement in the business cycle, readers’ anxieties are further addressed through uncomplicated, informative sidebars. Your readers will come away with a solid and sophisticated understanding of the economic principles underlying the business cycle, while feeling more confident and capable of coping with real world economic downturns.