Benjamin Roth was a Youngstown, Ohio lawyer who kept a meticulous diary throughout the Great Depression, recording his observations of the economic catastrophe unfolding around him from 1931 through 1941, along with his reflections on investment opportunities, business conditions, and the human suffering he witnessed among his clients and neighbors. Discovered by his son decades after his death and edited by historian James Ledbetter, the diary was published in 2009 — at the height of the financial crisis — and immediately recognized as one of the most valuable primary source documents on investor psychology during an economic catastrophe ever assembled. Roth was not a professional economist or investor: he was an ordinary intelligent professional trying to understand and navigate extraordinary circumstances, which makes his observations unusually relevant to how most readers might actually experience a comparable crisis. His repeated identification of investment opportunities in high-quality assets at distressed prices — opportunities he almost always lacked the liquid capital to pursue — teaches a powerful lesson about the importance of maintaining financial reserves specifically to deploy during dislocations. His documentation of the gradual normalization of depression-era conditions, and the long periods of apparent recovery followed by renewed declines, provides context that is impossible to get from looking at a price chart. Essential reading for any investor who wants to understand what genuine economic crisis looks and feels like from the inside.