World Famous Comics: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
By: Amity Shlaes Publisher: HarperCollins Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: HarperCollins Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 480 Publication Date: June 01, 2007 Release Date: June 12, 2007
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.
Not a teacher. I found the grammar in this book to be very poor. It was so distracting I had to stop reading. I don't understand how an editor would put a book to print that ends many sentences in dangling participles and others are just fragments that don't even pertain to the paragraph.
In my opinion this is very poorly written.
More Promise then Delivery I'm a liberal, a believer in the social welfare state and a drinker of the "Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression kool-aid," from way back but I'm always intrigued by a powerful revisionist theory. Ms. Shlaes presents her argument in the introduction where she states that the question isn't how the Great Depression ended but why it lasted so long. Here she blames Roosevelt for too much intervention in the economy but she also blames Hoover for signing the Smoot Hawley tariff and for tinkering with the economy in an ineffective way. Roosevelt didn't tinker, according her, but employed big public works project modeled on the fascist and communist systems still looked at favorably in the early thirties by many people.
Unfortunately, she doesn't deepen her argument during the remainder of her book but dilutes it with too many asides about Bill Wilson's AA crusade, Father Divine's efforts to end lynching, Andrew Mellon's saintly gift of the National Gallery and many more. As I read these mildly interesting sidebars, I found myself wondering, "what does this have to do with the economics of the Great Depression?" She also weakly covers the political scene without adding much new insight or depth of analysis.
Another weakness is how she describes and discusses the TVA. She is not alone on this front. I have read elsewhere about what a big deal this was and then its described as building some big dams and generating electricity for lots of rural people. Maybe it's the having lived in Central California which is a product of irrigation and re-routing rivers but I need more context for this discussion. Was the TVA the first systematic attempt at this? How many people were employed? How many lives were changed and how? The way Ms. Shales presents it, the TVA is a giant bureaucracy attempting to get ever bigger and more powerful. There is some intimation that this is a bad thing but she doesn't make a strong argument for that either.
I thought her most effective section concerned the Schechter case that went to the Supreme Court which ruled the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional. She does a good job showing both the arbitrary and anti-democratic as well as anti-capitalist nature of the NRA as well as nicely describes the lowly everyman chicken butchers who tamed the New Deal. There is a list of characters at the beginning and we learn what happened to them after the thirties ended. This sums up the problem of this book; a thesis which is macro-focused on American economics and a method where mini-biographical sketches are weaved throughout the text to no particular purpose but to divert and distract from an argument proposed but never proved.
It Takes an Open Mind. This book succinctly reveals that Socialism does not correct a Depression.
And the Democratics' Policies only makes Depressions deeper and longer.
I know, I lived through and survived the Great Depression, despite the Socialistic Programs imposed by Roosevelt.
What everyone needs to read and know For everyone who thinks FDR should be granted sainthood, or thinks he has, read this and finally learn just how messed up and destructive this administration was to the US.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression Ms. Shales' theory, in "The Forgotten Man", is that the actions of Franklin Roosevelt, and to a lessor extent Herbert Hoover, prolonged the Great Depression. Ms. Shales discusses a myriad of government programs and agencies which FDR created in an effort to end the economic downturn. Many of the people responsible for these agencies were great admirers of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Much of the socialism with which we are "blessed" today is a result of these "New Dealers". I believe that Ms. Shales' thesis is well founded. She does not, however, lead her readers to any definite conclusions. She offers bits and pieces of information from various sources to describe the actions of the Roosevelt administration, but she does not explain how these actions led to the continuation of the depression. The book bounces from event to event and person to person often without "connecting the dots".
Many people of the "Depression Generation" thought of FDR as a great saviour. Ms. Shales seems to be saying that FDR did more harm than good, specifically with regard to the economy. (The book ends prior to WWII and she does not dispute the idea that FDR was a great wartime president). I believe that she is correct in her thesis. Unfortunately, I think that she fails to lay out her supporting evidence in a cogent manner.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
