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Showing reviews 26-30 of 310
 Essential reading for discussing the Depression and current policy October 12, 2009
John Dalsheim (New York, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When the discussion turns to the New Deal or how Roosevelt saved the world, you would be much better prepared having read The Forgotten Man.
Further, it's striking to see the the repetition of the mistakes of the 20s and 30s being supported by today's leaders.
forgotten history December 27, 2009
Robert Lee (USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is very informative on how and why the U.S. had gotten into a depression and why it lasted so much longer for us than any other country at that time. It informs you of things you were never told by your teachers and you will never know unless you read this book. It is backed up by facts, and has extensive footnotes. It is a little difficult to read in some areas, but I made it through it in about a month, and I'm a very slow reader. I would recommend this book to any and all that want to know about the depression and the reasons why we ended up there in the first place, and what kept us there.
Depressing book for a different reason.... January 6, 2010
Daniel J. Silva (Salt Lake City, UT)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
You'd expect a book about the Great Depression to be depressing, but not in the way that this book is. I almost stopped reading it a number of times because of how angry/depressed I got at how much Roosevelt's people destroyed the personal liberty of the 'Forgotten' men. The basic premise of this book is how Roosevelt and his people changed original phrase, 'The Forgotten Man', to mean the poor and helpless. Its original meaning referred to the unsung heroes of America: the taxpayer, the business owner, the people who drive America to be what it is.
It is a very different approach to the great depression in that it chronicles the FDR administration's rise to power, the origin of their ideology, their decision making processes, and their execution of completely remaking the U.S. Federal Government to a welfare state. I suppose that you could say that this is a conservative perspective because it doesn't praise FDR's remake of America. But, it is not tainted with editorial jargon; the information is presented accurately and allows the reader to make the judgement.
We will forever be indebted to Ms. Shlaes for her historical contribution of this wonderful book.
Why is this not a textbook?!! September 23, 2007
Frederick Peterson (Washington, DC)
19 out of 27 found this review helpful
This book should be Required Reading for anyone who pretends to be college educated in America. Regardless of major.
It is a shining counterpoint to the dull and dreary quasi-socialist New Deal 'salvation' we are commonly taught is the history of the Great Depression.
Read it.
You will NOT be disappointed.
You WILL be challenged, enlightened, and intellectually armed to engage the next discussion of what "makes America work".
And what doesn't.
FDR: It wasn't as good as we were told but it could have been worse March 15, 2009
Richard M. Rollo Jr. (Montebello, CA USA)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Arthur Schlesinger and the other hagiographers established that FDR was a political genius (at least up to the point that his version of the story ends.)As one who was a product of the social sciences education of the 1960's when the hagiography of FDR was at its height, I was one of those children who ask rude questions such as:
If Hoover was so bad, how come FDR kept the Reconstruction Finance Corporation? If FDR's economic policies and regulation were so great, how come the stock market kept crashing again and again after 1929? If government expenditures on public works were so important, how come the unemployment rate remained so high? In short, if Roosevelt was so great, why did the Great Depression last so long? Children ask rude questions.
We've waited until very recently for books that take a more cold eyed look at all of the rude questions. This book by Amity Shlaes attempts cold eyed answers to some of these questions.
She also establishes fairly clearly that Marriner Eccles's monetary policy was a failure, and FDR's tax policies discouraged the private investment in businesses necessary for recovery. Worse yet, Roosevelt had a vindictive personality that even exceeded Richard Nixon's and he seemed highly motivated to use the powers of government to get even or "get at" his enemies.
Amity Shlaes has created a memorable account as well of the New Deal era, which came to an end in 1940. It is not the account FDR hagiographers would write nor would it appeal to the Roosevelt haters. She creates memorable portraits of such governmental figures as Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, Wendell Willkie, and also, such non governmental figures as Father Devine and Bill Wilson (founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
The portrait of Tugwell is a good example. Here is a familiar figure to those of us in the sixties. Like some of my professors, he traveled to a communist country (the Soviet Union rather than Cuba) and saw all of the wonderful things communal agriculture had to offer and did not see the enforced poverty and starvation of the people. He was so obsessed with changing human nature that he seemingly had no understanding of what motivates people. He founded Casa Grande, which was a government funded 1930's version of a hippie commune, and it went the way of all such ventures.
Raymond Moley, who had been part of Roosevelt's original brain trust, broke with Roosevelt over the court packing scheme and testified against it and later became a conservative Republican.
In the end, despite all the largesse of government, the forgotten man had to fend for himself, or as she quotes Justice Brandeis as saying, "...to go home and tend his own garden." Which is why she concludes with the prominent self help figures of the era.
My only contention with her portraits is with Wendell Willkie. Like many skilled at business, I think his political judgment was poor (Warren Buffett comes to mind as a modern day example of that.) Willkie's moment came in 1940 as a moment of opportunity. The Republican party was barely getting off the floor still too punch drunk to lead and Willkie slipped in and got the nomination. It went to his head and the limits of his political skills became embarrassingly evident by 1944.
In concluding her account of the Schechter's story in the "sick chicken case," Ms Shlaes makes the ironic comment that they probably voted for FDR four times. I think that's very common. My mother voted for FDR three times. Toward the end of her life, she bought a copy of Whittaker Chamber's Witness on the 50 cent table at a Library clearance sale. "Just for laughs," she said. This was before the release of the Venona Papers. She read it and then told me, "Oh boy, you know, that damned Nixon was right." I asked her if she would have voted for FDR if she had known about it. She said "Probably."
I'm a little late on this review. I read it last year in hardcover before my eye operations. It was well worth my struggle.
Showing reviews 26-30 of 310
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