Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 145 reviews) Sales Rank: 1330 Category: Book
Author:Amity Shlaes Publisher:HarperCollins Studio:HarperCollins Manufacturer:HarperCollins Label:HarperCollins Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published) Media: Hardcover Edition: 1 Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 480 Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7 Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.6
It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. These are the people at the heart of Amity Shlaes's insightful and inspiring history of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century.
In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Some of those figures were well known, at least in their day?Andrew Mellon, the Greenspan of the era; Sam Insull of Chicago, hounded as a scapegoat. But there were also unknowns: the Schechters, a family of butchers in Brooklyn who dealt a stunning blow to the New Deal; Bill W., who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the name of showing that small communities could help themselves; and Father Divine, a black charismatic who steered his thousands of followers through the Depression by preaching a Gospel of Plenty.
Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great?in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another.
Authoritative, original, and utterly engrossing, The Forgotten Man offers an entirely new look at one of the most important periods in our history. Only when we know this history can we understand the strength of American character today.
The past is your future November 23, 2008 Outstanding book, I am giving this book to every client who can read! If you want to know where we are going in the next 4 years under FDR Obama, you have a blueprint from the past in front of you.
The Forgotten Man November 23, 2008 I enjoy history and this book is an in depth look at the Great Depression and once again shows how government makes a problem and compounds the problem with there good intentions.
Yesterday's Lunacy Today November 23, 2008 There are so many parallels between the depression of the 1930's and what is happening in our economy today and how the cures are to be effected, that it is frightening. Roosevelt took the country far down the road to socialism and Obama intends to take it the rest of the way. Following in Roosevelt's footsteps will prolong the difficulty just as it did back then. This book should be required reading for every voter who is literate.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression November 22, 2008 Excellent well researched book on an important period in American history that has affected our country to this very day, and the lessons will probably not be heeded now. First time that have ever read the truth of what actually occurred in the Depression of the 1930's.
In one sentence, "FDR spitballed." November 21, 2008 This book, in one sentence, is "FDR spitballed."
Before reading this book, you may want to read the serendipitous companion book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Goldberg's book (coincidentally and independently) touches upon the same themes as Shlaes, but includes more detail about the antecedents: the Progressive Movement, the Wilson Administration, and has a comparison with the other EuroFascists.
After reading this book, read The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek). Hayek suggests ways to tool-down after having a command/centralized economy that developed during WWII. In short, Hayek's book is the anti-New Deal.
In-between, as you study this very readable book, pay close attention to the metrics at the beginning of each chapter. In all the legislation, alphabet agencies, Supreme Court packing, fireside chats, and general floundering, the unemployment percentages and DJIA numbers remain fairly stable.
In short, FDR was spitballing.
This book does have its lighter moments, if you are into sick comedy. Read pages 148-149, where FDR would set gold prices at random. Then skip to page 150, where Roosevelt seems indifferent to his being incoherent. Then read page 168, where the AAA kills six million pigs to create an artificially scarcity to move pork prices up.
FDR spitballed, and frequently missed.
The paperback edition contains a new afterward. I'm not sure why this was left out of the hardcover edition, since it sums up Shlaes findings, and is where she asserts her conclusions. If you got the hard cover, you got ripped off. But begin the book by reading this section, since it provides the road map for the lush and complex tale.
Younger readers (who lack practical work-force experience) may need a background in economics. I suggest Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, then Sowell's indispensable Basic Economics 3rd Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy and Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. All three of these are better works than Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.
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