The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes (PDF)

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In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation’s most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.

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Editorial Reviews: Review “Amity Shlaes is among the most brilliant of the young writers who are transforming American financial journalism.” — Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times“I could not put this book down. Ms. Shlaes timely chronicle of a fascinating era reads like a novel and brings a new perspective on political villains and heros―few of whom turn out to be as good or bad as history would have us believe.” — Arthur Levitt“Americans need what Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish.” — George F. Will“The Forgotten Man is an incisive and controversial history of the Great Depression that challenges much of the received wisdom.” — Harold Evans, author of The American Century and They Made America“The Forgotten Man offers an understanding of the era’s politics and economics that may be unprecedented in its clarity.” — Mark Helprin“Shlaes’s account of The Great Depression goes beyond the familiar arguments of liberals and conservatives.” — William Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard“Amity Shlaes’s fast-paced review of the [Depression] helps enormously in putting it all in perspective.” — Paul Volcker“The Forgotten Man is an epic and wholly original retelling of a dramatic and crucial era. There are many sides to the 1930’s story, and this is the one that has largely been lost to history. Thanks to Amity Shlaes, now it’s been re-found.” — Peggy Noonan“Entertaining, illuminating, and exceedingly fair. . . . A rich, wonderfully original, and extremely textured history of an important time. — The American Spectator“A well-written and stimulating account of the 1930s and its often dubious orthodoxies. . . . Ms. Shlaes rightly reminds us of the harmful effect of Rooseveltian activism and class-warfare rhetoric.” — The Wall Street Journal“The finest history of the Great Depression ever written. . . . Shlaes’s achievement stands out for the devastating effect of its understated prose and for its wide sweep of characters and themes. It deserves to become the preeminent revisionist history for general readers. . . . Her narrative sparkles.” — National Review“Captivating. . . . Illuminating. . . . The Forgotten Man is an engaging read and a welcome corrective to the popular view of Roosevelt and his New Deal. . . . A refreshingly critical approach to Franklin Roosevelt’s policies.” — Clive Crook, The Financial Times“Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Depression in splendid detail, rich with events and personalities. . . . Many of Shlaes’s descriptions make genuinely delightful reading.” — The New York Review of Books“The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes will forever change how America understands the causes of the Depression and FDR’s policies that prolonged it for a decade.” — Grover G. Norquist, The American Spectator About the Author Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man/Graphic, Coolidge, and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy. Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Book Prize, and serves as a scholar at the King’s College. Twitter: @amityshlaes

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐June 2, 2012NOT YOUR FATHER’S NEW DEAL – OR ANYONE ELSE’S THAT YOU WILL RECOGNIZEIn many respects, the Right is still bitter about the New Deal, and that can be seen in its reaction to the crash of 2008-2009. This is a reaction that is deliberately, and fanatically, designed to head off any inkling of a notion, the slightest disposition, towards a re-run of FDR’s New Deal at both the practical and theoretical level – not that the current Democratic Party was even considering it, or capable of mounting an adequate, updated version of it, despite the alignment of the circumstances. Amity Shlaes gave us a clear preview of this in her Forgotten Man (2007), where it is the fumbling, uncertainty, confusion and limited successes of the New Deal that make up a good part of her revisionist history, with private self-help programs like the founding of Bill Wilson’s Alcoholics Anonymous and the work of Father Divine contrasting with the statist overreaches of the Resettlement Administration and the public power programs of TVA. That’s quite a contrast to the emphasis Richard Pells gave us in his 1973 book, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years, with John Dewey, Robert Lynd, Lewis Mumford, Sidney Hook and Reinhold Niebuhr in his chapter called “The Search for Community,” where it is the left’s pursuit of new communitarian and collective institutions that are at heart of its response to the great economic and social collapse of the 1930’s, while these intellectuals struggled mightily to keep the best of the old liberalism’s focus on the independence and dignity of the individual citizen in the face of the Communist challenge. But I have to note, when one compares the assessment of Shlaes to Mumford’s just above, they have a common critical theme of focusing on FDR’s wavering navigational course, with no theoretical guidance or coherence. Their alternative remedies, however, are at opposite poles of the political spectrum.I’ve often wondered, since reading Shlaes book, about its fortuitous timing, appearing as it did in June of 2007. After all, why would a conservative be worried about lingering associations and misinterpretations of a decade and a president that the world view of the Democratic Party had already rejected? Was it Shlaes financial connections and associations (Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune that gave her an “insider’s” glimpse, in 2005-2006, or earlier, of what was coming in subprime and the world of mortgage derivatives? If not, she had incredibly good instincts and timing, to have ready at hand, ready in paperback edition too, an attack on every hopeful policy and program about the New Deal just at the very time when Democrats on the left might be inclined to reach back for it. The Republican Right in Congress was reading her book, recommending it and waving it about. Democrats, to prove my point, were not doing the same with Robert Leighninger’s Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal, despite its appearance in January of 2007. My book review, Still Shining: A Beacon of Hope from the New Deal up by March, 27, 2008 can be found here at http://www.amazon.com/Long-Range-Public-Investment-Forgotten-Problems/product-reviews/1570036632/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 . Nor were Democrats particularly excited when Nick Taylor’s American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work appeared in March of 2008.I’ve expressed my unhappiness with Ms. Shlaes’ book in a number of different essays and online comments. But I went back to take another look in light of the themes of this essay (The Costs of “Creative Destruction”: Wendell Berry vs. Gene Sperling, 2012). Sure enough, she was very tough with Rexford Tugwell, as you might imagine, that left-leaning academic enchanted with planning and federal initiatives, and devoted multiple pages to the struggling co-operative at Casa Grande, Arizona, to show how the devil’s work of co-operative land ownership turned out. She never gives a mention though, to the more pragmatic experimenter, Milburn L. Wilson, who also had an important influence on many agricultural policies, but doesn’t seem to fit as well with Ms. Shlaes attempts to color the New Deal, if not quite deep red, at least a moderate shade of pink, all the while denying she is red-baiting in the traditional fashion.Then there is a very important matter, which I had hoped other historians would have jumped in on by now, important for understanding rural Americans in the 1920’s and 1930’s and why they may have voted for FDR and the New Deal so often. I caught the discrepancy the first time I read her book. Shlaes is interested in casting the federal government as the aggrandizing leviathan (TVA and much more) in the rural electricity drama, pushing the ready and capable private sector servant out of the way, just when it was ready to give all those poor, living in-the-dark farmers the spark and the light. But it is likely that this is not what happened at all. One of America’s preeminent historians, famous for his unrelenting research, none other than Robert Caro (aided by his wife’s on the ground interviews in rural Texas) tells this public/private power tale at 180 degrees of difference from Shlaes. I don’t see how the discrepancy can be reconciled. Caro does that in the very first volume of his increasingly famous biography of LBJ, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, which appeared in 1982. I’ll be quoting from the Vintage paperback edition published in 1990. Caro’s account in the Chapter entitled “`I’ll Get It for You,'” – meaning Lyndon Johnson delivering on a promise to bring electricity to the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio – doesn’t begin, however, with the specifics of that region – he frames the issue as a national one: two America’s, one urban, with power and a good deal of abundance, and one rural, mostly poor and in the dark. The way he told the story burned it into my memory so strongly that I thought of this chapter immediately upon reading Shlaes account, more than a decade later. So here is the direct flavor of it, from the first three pages of “`I’ll Get It for You'”:”As late as 1935, farmers had been denied electricity not only in the Hill country but throughout the United States. In that year, more than 6 million of America’s 6.8 million farms did not have electricity…For two decades and more, in states all across the country, delegations of farmers, dressed in Sunday shirts washed by hand and ironed by sad iron, had come, hats literally in hand, to the paneled offices of utility-company executives to ask to be allowed to enter the age of electricity. They came in delegations, and they came alone…But in delegations or alone, the answer they received was almost invariably the same; that it was too expensive…Experiments – notable ones had taken place in Red Wing, Minnesota, and in Alabama- had conclusively proved that within two or three years after farmers had obtained electricity…their usage… soared – to a point where there was substantial profit for the utilities. When the utilities ignored these studies their true attitude became clear: not that rural electric service could not be profitable, but that it would not be as profitable as urban service…Alabama Power & Light refused to reduce its rates more than a token amount even after it was allowed to buy electricity at a very low cost from the government-owned dam at Muscle Shoals. When a farmer offered to pay the cost of building a power line to his house, the utilities said they would allow him to do so- but that when it was built, they, not he would own it.”This is no small matter, a splitting of hairs over an ambiguous, obscure chapter in American history. This is a matter crucial to establishing a fair history of the contest between public and private power, and why government sometimes needed to step into a vacuum, of power or fairness or both, especially in the 1930’s when the profit sector couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do so, willing to leave one third of a nation in the dark. One would think this would be a major matter between historians on the Left and the Right, and something that might rise to a political debate between Democrats and Republicans in the years 2008-2012. Sitting in front of me, for example, is the April 9, 2012 print edition of The Nation, whose read and black cover asks in giant letters: Can We Trust Government Again? Well, if you believe Shlaes’ account, and this was the clear intent of her book, the answer is no, we can’t, we can only have full faith in the private sector, and its supposedly self-correcting properties, and of course, private personal initiative, like that taken by the founder of AA, and Father Divine. If you believe Caro, then history, and even economics, looks very different, despite all the flaws and contradictions in Lyndon Johnson’s character.My re-reading of Shlaes also sent me to thinking about Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, and what that organization represents not just in the “self-help” framework that Shlaes is so eager to counterpose to the New Deal, but in terms of the persistent American search for “community” in the midst of a centrifugally mobile society following the dominant version of the American Dream. That’s the version based on a fiercely competitive, individualistic capitalist ethos. That was the title – “The Search for Community” – in Pells chapter devoted to left-wing American thought in the 1930’s. I can’t forget the theme because when I was in graduate school in American Studies, I met an older fellow student who was an active member of AA; indeed, he couldn’t stop talking about its sense “of community,” which gave him a particularly useful window looking out onto the rest of society. My own perspective is a bit different than his or Shlaes, however, leading to that recurring question: when things go wrong in America, who do we blame, the society or the individual? That’s the organizing theme of one of my favorite books, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (2003), by James A. Morone. Morone’s answer, especially when things go wrong economically, is that most of the time, due to our Protestant religious heritage, we blame the sinful individual, not the “system.” In the case of AA, it is the drinker who must take personal responsibility for getting into trouble before being accepted by the supporting community of former drinkers. No matter how one lost one’s last job, all the unfairness, the high unemployment rate, it’s no use to blame the system for one’s drinking, you have to change yourself. Fair enough, most of us would say.But what about seeing the long history of excessive American drinking as just one more example of many other forms of persistent addiction: alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, sports, shopping, eating, dieting, exercise, web-surfing, hand-held electronics gazing…speculating in the markets? Without for one moment eliminating personal responsibility from the equation, might not this list, which could go on for pages, say something else about American life besides its remarkable production of so many seemingly weak-willed individuals – in a nation of headstrong entrepreneurs? Could all these addictive behaviors be part of a pattern, of a search for what’s missing from the intensively competitive economic order? Isn’t the perennial search for community by so many parties a clue that something might be wrong, be missing in the broader society and its economy? Do not the personal dynamics of “the binge” and then the “withdrawal” seem to mirror the psychology of the manic market in its cycles of booms and busts? (Bill Wilson was a stock analyst, after all). Of course, even within AA, the silliness of seeing all this addiction as the result of just so many people with character disorders is deflected by “treating alcoholism…as a sickness,” which Shlaes suggests occurred very early on in the 1930’s formational meetings Bill Wilson had with Dr. Robert Smith. After Shlaes emphasizes that Wilson didn’t like the New Deal at all, we do get some perhaps unintended insights from her on these early days and the fact that Wilson and Smith were both from Vermont: “Part of the problem of the alcoholic was loneliness, especially nowadays – there was no longer the sort of New England village green where the men had grown up. To find consolation…the two could not retrieve the old Vermont village, but they could build a new village, a community of alcoholics.”Although Ms. Shlaes might have worked her hop-skipping, glancing references to the life of Father Divine, the charismatic black religious leader, into a chapter on the search for black community in the Great Depression, that’s not what she was after. Instead, she takes real delight, like many on the Right today, in presenting a black leader who rebuffs the governmental “hand-out” and instead turns to entrepreneurial self-help, an early version of candidate Herman Cain. Father Divine (c.1876-1965) is applauded for his anti-regulatory, anti-government attitudes in shielding his many businesses, his refusal to endorse FDR or the New Deal, his stress on the importance of education, support for anti-lynching laws, and his demonstrations of plenty in contrast to the alleged “scarcity” economics of the New Deal (his low cost restaurants and lavish, free banquets for the poor).Shlaes also might have seen the convergence between Divine’s economic directions and some of Tugwell’s and Wilson’s “experiments,” because he bought 25 properties, mostly farms, in Ulster County, New York, some 100 miles north of the city. She instead compares his efforts there to Upton Sinclair’s agricultural communities in California (which are not explained) and notes that he was planning to add canneries and “eventually, automobile manufacturing.” Historian Carleton Mabee, in the Preface to his 2008 book, Promised Land: Father Divine’s Interracial Communities in Ulster County, New York, says there were eventually 33 “communities” with 2,300 members, in efforts that were “experimental, cooperative and nonviolent.”It’s not easy to categorize Father Divine, whose birthplace is uncertain – most likely in Georgia or Rockville, Maryland, but, in either case, probably the child of former slaves. Following his life here at Wikipedia’s biography […] reminded me of the abolitionist John Brown, who also moved to so many different places and started so many ventures, including bi-racial ones in upstate New York. But I think it is fair to question Shlaes’ emphasis on the individualism of Divine’s business and property buying activities, and comparing his followers aim’s to those of Booker T. Washington. There is a common denominator of self-improvement and education, but in reading further about Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement church, there’s also a clear stress on the co-operative and communal in the way the businesses and farms were run, and later owned after the initial purchase. I doubt Booker T. Washington would have been pleased by that aspect, but, as is true with most of Ms. Shlaes’ book, we’re not getting the complexity and nuances of Divine and his movement, we’re seeing him as a useful agent in skewering the policies and politics of the New Deal.Yet for all the work Shlaes has put into burying the idea of an “effective” New Deal as any type of useful contemporary model, joined in that effort, I’m sad to say, by the leadership of the Democratic Party, she was really engaging in overkill – in addition to her startling distortions of what actually happened.It’s true, though, that despite mixed results, the “common man” registered his experience of the 1930’s with gratitude at the polls, at least, for FDR’s “experiments.” The decade also registered shrinking Democratic margins after the landslide of 1936, as the nation drifted to the right, especially after 1937-38. When Robert and Helen Lynd went back to see how the Great Depression had changed Middletown (actually Muncie, Indiana) in 1935, their findings, published as Middletown in Transition in 1937, should have been reassuring intellectually to Ms. Shlaes. Pells tell us that they found that “`no major new …ideologies of a positive sort have developed as conspicuous rallying points…’ Instead the residents of Muncie appeared increasingly vulnerable to `gross emotional symbols’ which shaped their view of the world and prevented them from becoming fully conscious of their plight.”Oh yes, there’s just one more small little matter which prospective readers should be aware of before they plunge into The Forgotten Man, something which Ms. Shlaes doubtless forgot to tell her readers. The title does come from a William Graham Sumner essay from 1883 of that title, and Ms. Shlaes summary of that essay seems fair to me. But what she doesn’t tell her readers is that Professor Sumner of Yale was the leading Social Darwinist in Gilded Age America, dead set against any progressive or Socialist reforms – or reformers – of his era. Despite that, he’s a fascinating man, born in Paterson, NJ, who became a minister and did a stint at the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. But, according to Richard Hofstader’s fine account “Social Darwinism in American Thought,” despite teaching at Yale, Sumner’s views on the economy never deviated much from what he had read at the age of 14, in 1854: “…Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, ‘Illustrations of Political Economy,’ whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of laissez faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles.” It’s enough to make some of us question the very idea of evolution in economics.William NeilRockville, MD

⭐(Note: I own, and have READ, all of this book) (…)(396 pages)Short Review: Definitely a very interesting and enjoyable book. Deals with a lot more than just the economic history of the Great Depression. Incorporates lots of historical facts, names and some figures, but manages to do so with sufficient elan and flow, that ‘readability’ remains of a very high quality. Yes, there ARE a lot of names mentioned. Some reviewers have struggled with that, and complained. But then, remember, this is not a novel, and there were indeed lots of players strutting the stage at the time. Chapter 2, “The Junket”, details the surreal meeting with Stalin, at the Kremlin, of some of our later ‘Great Leaders’. It was almost like a pilgrimage. Many of these intellectuals later became influential members of FDR’s intelligentsia. They had a massive impact on public opinion and hugely affected the American public’s perception of Stalin. This aspect of the book, for me, was very well written. Many of these pilgrims were prominent in later New Deal thinking. We ask ourselves: were they gullible? Sincere, well meaning, but naive? Absolutely fascinating. The growth of the Stalin cult, its subtle later influence on FDR, who many claim, was no great thinker or scholar, culminating in the accusation of 325 confirmed Soviet spies in FDR’s administration (as per Venona decripts), and ultimately the furiously controversial events at Yalta.This book really does do an excellent job of showing how grotesquely distorted a view of the Soviet Union was served up to the American people. And not just for a few years, but for a couple of decades. We read how people who started having doubts, seemingly preferred to ignore those doubts, and still went along with the fairy tale. And then of course, there were the legions of dreamy idealists, who bought the whole “Soviet workers’ paradise” story, hook-line-and sinker, and who wished only to emigrate to the workers’ paradise of the Soviet Union, and never -ever- come back to the sullied shores of corrupt, capitalistic Americay…A hard book to put down. You kind of might end up (I did) shaking your head wearily: how is it possible that such a distorted view became mainstream thinking, and how is it possible that ‘we, the people’ can be manipulated so easily and effectively. Can it still happen today?This book will NEVER be described as an apology of FDR’s New Deal. I have some sympathy with those who are angry that the positive accomplishments of the New Deal are glossed over. The well meaning idealism, arguably misguided at times, on the part of many of the rank and file, does not come out very well. If at all. The poverty, the despair, is not painted in depth to us. Miss Frances Perkins, secretary of Labor, first woman cabinet minister, one of my favorite characters, is relegated to a very minor role. (she gets my sympathy vote as being this book’s ‘Forgotten Woman’) But to accuse the writer of bias is too strong. I see it more as being the case that the author was more preoccupied with the economic aspects of the crisis, rather than any in depth description of the humanitarian aspect. Other books do that for us.However, read the book, with an open mind, and draw your own conclusions.Very topical, as we all ponder the economic future, as of March 2009. With certain politicians advocating the “New New Deal”, and returning to increased ‘Central Planning’ thinking, and a strong drift towards European style government (and hence rapidly growing government share of GDP, I believe approaching 40%) this book could hardly be in the news at a more controversial time. The subject matter is furiously relevant to today’s political debate. Especially if we are going to be told that the debate is “over”. And that the ‘winner’ is FDR and the New Deal.Not so fast…An easy, solid, four star. I do have some minor grumbles. The biggest one for me is the lack of numerical source notes embedded in the text. Amity does have ‘bibliographic notes’ in the back, but it’s not the same.From, admittedly, the perspective of March 2009 the biggest oddity (and some wry thoughts) for me was the very last paragraph, on page 396. It seemed to me be a bit of an internal contradiction, from an author who spends 395 pages dissecting the many flaws and outright, expensive, failures of the New Deal. It’s open to assault, now, for sure, but I don’t hold that against the author. How times change.”In fact, infrastructure spending is often just a nicer name for what we used to call pork. Given the depth of modern capital markets, the new Deal’s old argument that “only the government can afford this” looks particularly weak. The New Deal edifice is solid enough, but it doesn’t form the best basis for the national future.”Long Review: Right from the beginning, the Introduction, this book had me in its grip. The author sets us a small trap on page 5 (into which I promptly stumbled) and quickly shows her firm grasp on History. There are many, many quotes, and detailed references to contemporary events, which quickly gave me confidence that this work has been exhaustively researched. Some reviewers deny that fact, however. This is about the tenth specific FDR/New Deal book I have recently read, and the sixth I’m trying to review. I’m going to try something different this time from my other reviews: Let’s go straight to the negative reviews and comments, and summarize some of these -furiously- hostile critiques.Arnold Kling had the temerity to post a soft spoken ‘five star’ review, and even says, very diplomatically:”I should stress that these are my own views, and that TFM is much less prone to making generalizations and drawing conclusions. Readers with a variety of backgrounds and predispositions can appreciate the book and learn their own lessons…”And THEN, if you read the comments (hopefully including mine) you will quickly see that all hell broke loose.’Diane’, bless her, says words to the effect of:” The author has cherrypicked her information to write a history that supports her ideological bias that government intervention in the economy is always bad, conveniently leaving out information that does not support her ideology. Useful to read to find out what the anti-FDR Republican party believes; not useful to read if one desires a true history of the 1930s.”T.Carlsen has a lot to say. And gives us -helpfully- a lot of details of his thinking. More than can be said for the many gray variants you read everywhere of “I HATED this stupid book”, with no references to the book, and no explanations why…And Michael Emmet Brady also wades in, furiously plastering the label “libertarian economist” on poor Mr Kling, and giving us some jargon you should look at, that I do not pretend to understand. I’m not actually sure if I am even meant to. I have some University level mathematics, and if I was pointed helpfully in the right direction, I might learn something, but that comment is for chosen insiders, the exalted ones, and excludes the vulgar plebs.Also check out the review by Jim Powell, the author of “FDR’s Folly” (see my review). I personally love it when busy authors take the trouble to be involved in these discussions.In the review by Prof. CJ “The Eclectic Professor”, there is a reference to an ominous press statement by Mr Obama. I have not been able to find a link on the web to the exact wording of that statement, but do check it out, aswith my comment.So… what do we make of all that then?As I said, this simple fellow enjoyed the book. I found it stimulating, contained good (excellent) prose, and provided me with plenty of opportunity to see different points of view. Some conclusions I took with a pinch of salt, and I’ve read enough to be able to “filter” the overall aspect. The New Deal to me was not ‘all bad’. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Kling, when he says: ” Readers with a variety of backgrounds and predispositions can appreciate the book and learn their own lessons…”I’m also inclined to believe that a book that can stir such vitriolic passion against it, must have some achievement and merit. There seem to be people who are most anxious that we do NOT read it.Diane’s comment I found singularly unhelpful. It is, however, an excellent example of a particular attitude. I would ask: Did you actually READ the book, m’dear? We seriously wonder. Forgive me for suspecting a closed mind, that would rather avoid the undoubted cerebral effort to read the book, and does so by conveniently sticking a label on it. Such an unhelpful, entrenched, boring, class warfare statement.Thank goodness for Mr Carlsen. He not only says he doesn’t like the damn book, but he tells us WHY. He goes to some trouble to tell us WHY. His review you should read, before you buy the book. I mostly do not agree with him, but I respect him for a detailed argument.I have replied with a comment to his. If I am missing the boat, quite possibly, please comment constructively, and let me know. Suggestions for further reading always very much appreciated.In summary: The New Deal era was a pivotal time. What we are sailing into, as a troubled nation, in March 2009, has profound echoes from that time. My instinct is to examine every possible point of view. The debate, far from being “over” is once again hotting up.To reject this book, without even reading it, because somebody stuck a label on it of “ideological bias”, and “untrue history”, and describes it as a prop for the “anti-FDR Republican party”, to me, would be a great pity.But such are the odd, polarized polemics of Amazon. Watch the “unhelpful” votes descend on this -perfectly honest- review, from a simple chap trying hard to understand our History, and be open-minded!Peace. Enjoy the read.

⭐This book challenges the received wisdom concerning the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression that followed. It begins by describing the suicide caused by the impact of the Great Depression – and then informs the reader that the suicide occurred in 1938, when unemployment and bankruptcy had returned almost to the level of 1931, the worst year of the recession. Indeed Shlaes contends that but for the war 1939 and 1940 might have been worse, and Roosevelt would not have won his third term, if he had chosen to stand again.Shlaes argues that the twenties were not a frivolous decade – the USA made enormous advances and the companies that survived contributed to the post-war boom as well.She disputes the idea that all Republicans were laissez faire – in particular Hoover both believed in state intervention, and did everything that he could to prop up the banks and stabilize the economy. That he failed was not the consequence of indifference, or indeed a lack of Keynesianism – he intervened more than Roosevelt did in his first term of office. Indeed Roosevelt’s “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” is a Moneterist not a Keynesian proposition.She then goes through some individual cases. Wenvil Wilkie, who went bust, went alcoholic, but then recovered both personally and financially, to unsuccessfully challenge Roosevelt in 1940. She follows the legal prosecution of the bankers, who got the blame – rather than the Stock Market. The outcome was a lot of money spent, no convictions, but some sizeable art donations that have enriched New York’s galleries ever since.There is a fascinating chapter on how whole counties – having lost faith with both the goverment and the financial institutions, just set up their own, including their own currencies. Other states set up a system of exchange, defining how much corn or meat a car repair or a dress might be worth. Though I do not think she comments on this – such a mass opt-out must have impacted upon goverment revenues, and limited the power of the state to intervene.She describes how many American politicians and in particular the Democratic Party were both deceived and besotted by Stalin and the Soviet Union, and how some hoped to use the New Deal, which finally took off in Roosevelt’s second term, to promote his policies in the USA.In one area Roosevelt was very successful – he won over the entertainment industry – and securred its attachment to both the New Deal and the Democratic Party. As a baby boomer I found it interesting that far from being an hobo, Woody Guthrie was paid well for travelling round the country and writing socialist and fraternal hymns. By winning over the entertainment industry Roosevelt has influenced the way that we all see the Great Depression, and how economists and modern news media see the world through Keynesian eyes.Though she does not explicitely say this, I could only conclude that WW2, allowed the New Deal to work. It suspended all normal economic intercourse, allowed the USA to sell to the combatants, but critically the USA won. It won big – for a generation all of its economic rivals, Britain, Germany, Japan and Russia were crippled by the cost or the damage of war. This is a very good read.

⭐Very very illuminating. Dispels a lot of myths.

⭐This book explores the Great Depression from a new and very human angle. It should be read by any with an interest in that period.

⭐Hard going

⭐Ms Shlaes has given a lucid and insightful account of a stormy period of our shared history. Human lessons we need to remember.

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