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Showing reviews 11-15 of 306
 Belated, but needed balance August 11, 2007
thefonz (Niagara Falls)
25 out of 32 found this review helpful
I had always found Amity Shlaes' columns in the WSJ to be quite informative. This book piqued my interest because I felt it would be a highly competent treatment of the over-glossy presidency of FDR, which, while I was in high school, was never subject to the rigorous criticism like other periods and persons of the 20th century. The other reason for reading it was because this presidency ushered in a new way of looking at, and living with, government. Thereafter the scope of the role of government was irreversibly changed.
Shlaes has a short note prefacing each chapter that cites the year, the unemployment rate, and the Dow. After moving through the chapters, and each year of the Depression, it's sad to realize just how long the Depression lasted and how little positive economic change there was for so long. Prior to buying this book, I read some of the reviews and in a couple places there is mention of growth and copious defense, via macroeconomic statistics in hindsight, that try to vindicate FDR, his cohorts and their often experimental policies. Those measurements could very well be true, but there's no denying that the American people were severely impoverished for just about a decade. It might not even be fair to say that once the Depression was over that it was an "all's well that ends well" situation because it was war and the building of corporatism - basically trading one way of expanding government for another - that supplanted it.
In all fairness, FDR's predecessor Hoover did believe the government was an agent of engineering society, and he earnestly started public work's projects and more government intervention when the Depression began. The major difference with FDR was his wholesale turn to academics (and there is a cast of characters in the book to follow) who were enamored with the young Soviet Union and who saw themselves intellectually capable of fixing and ordering society according to their models. This resulted in the creation of more departments, programs and the massive increases in taxes that removed private investment and consumption from the economy and exacerbated the already dismal conditions.
FDR was surrounded by a cadre of persons who advised him and who, arguably, may have been more interested in their own legacies and preferences than the lot of those they served. One of the most telling scenes in the book was when FDR was on a boat for a private fishing trip with his aides. While enjoying the sport they basically devised their political strategy on how to attack the wealthy. Shlaes term about the "incongruity" of planning class warfare while on a yacht was apropos.
Two persons in the book stand out more than they did in my history classes, where they were just passing names. Wendell Wilkie and particularly Father Divine were given more limelight. All in all, there was lots of eye-opening material, the book was well-footnoted, and there was a coda that provided how the careers of the major players in the book turned out. In every way, this was a great, complete read.
Reads like a fast-paced spy thriller August 11, 2007
Jeffrey L. Armbruster (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA USA)
33 out of 43 found this review helpful
According to the author, Herbert Hoover triggered the Great Depression by torpedoing the US economy with high tarrifs and punishing income taxes. Hoover gets voted out of office and replaced by Franklin Roosevelt, a closet-socialist who surrounded himself with socialists and communists who all dreamed of America's future in the image of Stalin's Soviet model. This group zealously practiced class envy while broadening, deepening and lengthening the depression by destroying big business and pirating wealth from successful entrepreneurs. FDR and his socialists fiddled with the economy while the fogotten man got burned -- the forgotten man being the entrepreneur, the self-employed, and those who didn't require government hand-outs to be successful.
Then Hitler's war bailed them all out from economic disaster.
A fascinating book.
Leave your ideology at the door, please. May 17, 2009
lb136 (New York, NY USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Amity Shlaes's author bio notes that she's been published, among other places, in the New Yorker and the National Review. Probably she's one of the few who can claim that; and when you delve into her deftly done "The Forgotten Man," you'll quickly see how she could have brought that feat off. Assertive but not didactic, fair but critical when she has to be, she spins out what can probably best be described as a Libertarian version of the story of the Great Depression, featuring vignette and anecdote, and avoiding dry narrative history. The result is a compelling look back at a time most of us have trouble imagining, a time when several of "the several states" actually created their own scrip to replace the deflated, virtually useless dollar.
As the author riffs through the era (she begins in 1927 and ends in 1940), she devotes each chapter to a specific topic, although without skipping around in time. Among the highlights for me were her description of the time some left-wingers, many of whom would end up in FDR's cabinet or his "Brain Trust," sailed the Atlantic to visit Stalin's USSR, and were thrilled to have met the dictator; how the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the NRA (National Recovery Act) in a suit brought by four kosher chicken merchants from Brooklyn; and the apprehension of indicted entrepreneur Samuel Insull, who had fled to Turkey after an escape from . . . oh, but that would be telling. The efforts of Hoover's treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, to present the nation with a national art gallery fascinate, too. Ms. Shlaes, naturally enough, also spends time describing FDR's financial experiments and his technique of playing his advisers off each other.
The forgotten man of the the title, as explained in the quotation in the book's headnote, is "C," the taxpayer, who is dragged into the fray however reluctantly when "A" and "B" attempt to come to the aid of "X." As you will see, though, FDR (as had Hoover) was thinking of "X" when he referred to the forgotten man. Ms. Shlaes, of course, begs to differ.
And maybe she has a more specific forgotten man in mind too. That would be entrepreneur Wendell Willkie, to whom the author gives major props. Once renowned, he's now pretty much remembered, if at all, as the unsuccessful GOP presidential nominee in 1940. You'll probably think after you finish the book he deserved a better fate than to have wound up as an answer to a trivia question. He gets one here.
Warning for ideologues: FDR takes some lumps, although no doubt his reputation will survive the author's skeptical (but far from bashing) analysis, and she's no kinder to Hoover.
June 25, 2007
Gerald Bowyer (Pittsburgh, PA)
40 out of 55 found this review helpful
Although the book is neither intended to be, nor reads like political polemics, it should change open minds about the events that led to the creation of the coalition that still holds the left flank of the Democratic party together. Before the great depression classical liberalism generally held sway amongst US policy makers. However, the inability of many free-market types to explain the depression and the decision of the anti-growth right represented by Hoover to effectively deal with it, put the market place and its defenders on defense, and central planning became the received wisdom. Finally, almost 80 years later, the author challenges that received wisdom.
Some of the critique of FDR has been found in other places, but in a much more hard-edged argumentative style, but the book's real gem is the revelation regarding how much continuity there was between Hoover and Roosevelt. Hoover was, in a very real sense and FDR Republican and FDR was in a even more real sense a Hoover Democrat.
Also of interest is the degree to which the 1930 longed for a 'dictator'. FDR came far closer than the vast majority of Americans realize, but not as close as his harshest conservative critics claim. Ms. Shlaes, captures the perfect balance - candid about FDRs authoritarian streak, but fair in recording his self-restraint.
I learned a great deal about the financial history of the era. I think many others will too.
Great Book November 1, 2009
Peter D. Reimer (New York)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I learned a lot. definitely would recommend. I only wish that it had covered the entire FDR Presidency but it only covers the period of the Great Depression. But that's what it's about so I can't complain or be surprised.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 306
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