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The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
by Amity Shlaes
by Amity Shlaes
I've decided 3 stars for me will mean a book that I enjoy but that I wouldn't pester others to read.
The Forgotten Man is about the Great Depression but not from the standpoint of the average Joe. For that story, see my review of The Worst Hard Times. This is a story of those at the top who either made the decisions on how to handle the Depression through policy or opposed them. The man that the title refers to is the one who is eager to take a risk in order to get a reward, the "adventurer" as the author refers to him.
The New Deal of FDR started out with more than a passing glance to the work of Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in the USSR. Big, powerful, take-charge government was the talk of the world and American entrepreneurial Capitalism looked like a potential failure.
Shlaes shows us how the first attempt of the New Deal to grab control and order everything around that it could was knocked out by the ruling of the Supreme Court that certain methods (such as the NRA, the National Recovery Administration) were un-constitutional. But, creative politician that he was, FDR re-designed things to center on building constituencies such as the farmers and the unions.
The many twists and turns of the New Deal kept the country's attention, providing big action when the nation was groping for any new direction.
Shlaes is fair to all parties. She contends that the New Deal was greatly over-rated in what it did to revive the economy but she doesn't hesitate to praise the leadership abilities of Roosevelt and the liabilities of the Republican party platform of the time.
There are side stories - of the guy who started Alcoholics Anonymous and Father Devine, an African-American leader in New York, but I got the feeling she included these to keep the book from being too dry and focusing too much on the elite. The story of Andrew Mellon and Wendell Willkie show us the rich can be decent folks, too. This non-fiction defense of the freedom of the individual is far better than the beating over the head we get with Ayn Rand and shows remarkable restraint for someone who was once on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
The Forgotten Man is an appropriate read after living through the government spending binge that we've seen in the last two years. The same issues are involved. Bernanke's huge government debt increase is a direct result of what he believes were lessons learned from the policies of the Great Depression, so clearly presented by this book.
The Forgotten Man is about the Great Depression but not from the standpoint of the average Joe. For that story, see my review of The Worst Hard Times. This is a story of those at the top who either made the decisions on how to handle the Depression through policy or opposed them. The man that the title refers to is the one who is eager to take a risk in order to get a reward, the "adventurer" as the author refers to him.
The New Deal of FDR started out with more than a passing glance to the work of Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in the USSR. Big, powerful, take-charge government was the talk of the world and American entrepreneurial Capitalism looked like a potential failure.
Shlaes shows us how the first attempt of the New Deal to grab control and order everything around that it could was knocked out by the ruling of the Supreme Court that certain methods (such as the NRA, the National Recovery Administration) were un-constitutional. But, creative politician that he was, FDR re-designed things to center on building constituencies such as the farmers and the unions.
The many twists and turns of the New Deal kept the country's attention, providing big action when the nation was groping for any new direction.
Shlaes is fair to all parties. She contends that the New Deal was greatly over-rated in what it did to revive the economy but she doesn't hesitate to praise the leadership abilities of Roosevelt and the liabilities of the Republican party platform of the time.
There are side stories - of the guy who started Alcoholics Anonymous and Father Devine, an African-American leader in New York, but I got the feeling she included these to keep the book from being too dry and focusing too much on the elite. The story of Andrew Mellon and Wendell Willkie show us the rich can be decent folks, too. This non-fiction defense of the freedom of the individual is far better than the beating over the head we get with Ayn Rand and shows remarkable restraint for someone who was once on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
The Forgotten Man is an appropriate read after living through the government spending binge that we've seen in the last two years. The same issues are involved. Bernanke's huge government debt increase is a direct result of what he believes were lessons learned from the policies of the Great Depression, so clearly presented by this book.
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Deedee
(last edited 14. August, 08:41 Uhr)
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rated it 1 star
14. August, 08:39 Uhr
Thoughtful review. Must disagree with your statement: "Shlaes is fair to all parties." No, she isn't. Her book is a one-sided prosecutor's indictment of FDR and all of his policies. Her employer, the Wall Street Journal, has consistently been opposed to FDR; this book describes why Wall Street hated FDR. This book is not really history; it is opinion journalism, with facts selected in order to present her point of view to best advantage. There is a place for such books (see: Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken). My complaint is that this opinion journalist view of FDR is getting shelved as "history".
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