The New Deal

A Modern History

customer reviews

In this bold reevaluation of a decisive moment in American history, Michael Hiltzik dispels decades of accumulated myths and misconceptions about the New Deal to capture with clarity and immediacy its origins, its legacy, and its genius.

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Book details:

Free Press |
512 pages |
ISBN 9781439158951 |
September 2011

$12.38 List Price

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Praise

“Makes fascinating reading for a nation facing many of the same problems it confronted, and conquered, 80 years ago.”

– Philadelphia Inquirer

SEE ALL PRAISE (5)

“Makes fascinating reading for a nation facing many of the same problems it confronted, and conquered, 80 years ago.”

– Philadelphia Inquirer
“Mr. Hiltzik presents the New Deal as an adventure made all the more thrilling by the uncertainty of its outcome--‘a work in progress from its beginning to end’--and one that sustained democracy by keeping America from social and economic collapse.”

– The Wall Street Journal
“Hiltzik gives a thrilling sense of the sweaty, seamy personal side of politics…the extent to which the various provisions of the New Deal were a non-ideological improvisation, hectic, driven, often fizzling and failing. Yet the big picture effects were swift and direct: 11.5 million people were unemployed in 1932; 6.2 million at the end of 1938. Pertinent, timely.”

– Los Angeles Times
“A sweeping, lively survey… [written] with panache and skill…A timely, well-executed overview of the program that laid the foundation for the modern progressive state.”

– Kirkus Reviews
“Terrific, energetically written and eminently readable….narrated with vigorous prose, a clear-sighted appreciation of just what motivated FDR and his allies, and a modern understanding of what they actually accomplished. And unlike the doorstop histories, you'll finish it quickly enough to be left wishing for more.”

– Mother Jones

Read an Excerpt

1

“ACTION NOW”

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT BEGAN Inauguration Day at a 10 A.M. religious service with his family, his cabinet appointees, secretaries, aides, and a few close friends. The location was St. John’s Episcopal Church, across Lafayette Park from the White House, chosen because it had no steps to complicate the wheelchair-bound President-elect’s entry from the street. Inside, the Reverend Endicott Peabody, rector of Groton, FDR’s old school, read from the Protestant Book of Common Prayer and beseeched the Almighty to favor and bless “Thy servant, Franklin, chosen to be... see more