The Great Depression produced some of the greatest novelists in United States history: John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Zora Neale Hurston, Nathanael West. In 2011, as the U.S. recovers from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, our next guest wonders why the Great Recession hasn't yet generated a book like "The Grapes of Wrath." Michael Goldfarb is a freelance reporter. His article, "Where Are Today's Steinbecks?" appeared on the BBC.

A new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds that over 17 million American families — nearly 1 in 8 — went hungry at some point in the last year. The figures include as many as one million children. The family hardships of our current Great Recession inevitably recall stories of the Great Depression, an era when many Americans came of age scrimping and saving every penny and every last crumb. So how will the experiences of the children of the Great Recession compare to those who were kids during the Great Depression? 

A small group of economists are trying to study whether income inequality may have contributed to the economic collapse. The income gap in the years leading up to the recent recession, which is often compared to the Great Depression, has a striking resemblance to the income equality in 1928, when the top 10 percent of earners received nearly half of the total income. Finance reporter Louise Story wrote about this theory for The New York Times earlier in August, and we spoke with her about the income gap on The Takeaway last week.