Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938 [Hardcover]

Gary Dean Best (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0275935248 | ISBN-13: 978-0275935245

The first sustained scholarly critique of the New Deal from the conservative perspective, this study argues that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, himself, the primary obstacle to American recovery from the Great Depression of 1933-38. In developing his arguments, author Gary Dean Best focuses on the fact that the depression continued through eight years of the Roosevelt administration, despite unprecedented intervention by the federal government in the nation's economic life. Challenging conventional explanations that fault Roosevelt for not embracing Keynesian spending on a scale sufficient to produce recovery, Best finds the roots of America's slow return to economic health in Roosevelt's hostility to the very groups he should have been encouraging: the American business and financial communities. Best provides one of the most careful and objective studies published to date on the actual effects of Roosevelt's policies and programs on American business operations and psychology. He reexamines the issue of why businessmen and bankers were so critical of the New Deal--criticisms that have been, until now, largely dismissed as motivated by greed and selfishness. He also asks how Roosevelt and his advisors could have hoped to produce an economic recovery when a state of near war existed between the administration and the employers and investors who, alone, could produce such a recovery. Using the letters and diaries of the New Deal's business and other critics during the decade as well as the writings in banking and business periodicals of the day and the criticisms of contemporary economists, including Keynes himself, Best offers a persuasive indictment of New Deal policies and a more realistic explanation of America's failure to recover from the depression before World War II than has yet been available. His work is an important counterweight to conventional evaluations of Roosevelt and the New Deal and should be required reading in any course dealing with the history and politics of the 1930s.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

GARY DEAN BEST is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (November 30, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275935248
• ISBN-13: 978-0275935245
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,509,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is an excellent description of the New Deal, December 4, 1998

By 

Burton Folsom ([e-mail] (Midland, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938 (Hardcover)

Professor Best produces an array of primary sources to demonstrate that Roosevelt--by his persistent hostility to business--retarded recovery from the Great Depression throughout the 1930s. He uses poll data, quotations from the diaries and correspondence of Morgenthau and others, and newspaper reports to weave together a chilling but well documented account of how FDR retarded recovery and then further blamed businessmen when the economy stalled. Roosevelt, according to the documents, was astonishingly irrational and egotistical in philosophy, but very clever in using federal dollars to gain votes and perpetuate himself in office. This is a five star book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning scholarship, July 13, 2008

By 

Federal Farmer (Montgomery, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938 (Hardcover)

Gary Dean Best convincingly argues that Roosevelt deliberately neglected to enact policies that would have restored business confidence and improved employment because he was determined to use the Depression as a path for establishing the federal government as the supreme power over the economy. Best does so by using the words and policies of FDR and his minions. A thorough researcher, Best makes use of primary sources from the FDR Library, for example, but his use of contemporary articles from Depression-era business periodicals is especially useful. This book leaves nothing to interpretation. Time and again Best demonstrates that Roosevelt and his administration deliberately prolonged the suffering of millions in order to gain political power. Given the choice between actions and words that would have spurred an economic recovery or actions and words that would have furthered "reform" (the suppression of the power of businessmen and the establishment of a centralized, ordered, planned economy centered around the redistribution of wealth and not its creation) the president chose "reform."

Roosevelt's policies and words never ended the Depression, never could, and were not designed to do so. His economic policies failed, and his refusal to enact policies that economic experts from academia and business agreed would have led to an economic recovery leave Roosevelt guilty for the massive suffering millions of Americans endured.

Furthermore, Best demonstrates conclusively that FDR was willfully ignorant regarding economics and business, and was spiteful, mean, and arrogant. He also makes a strong case that FDR desired to establish an American form of near-dictatorship centered around himself. What is more, a large portion of the American people (about 45 percent, as I recall) believed by about 1937 that Roosevelt had dictatorial ambitions.

Best crushes Roosevelt's reputation as a president and as a person.

I've read nearly a thousand history books and this is easily in the top five. Best has written a stunning, superb book that needs a wide readership. This scholar has single-handedly re-written the history of the Depression, the New Deal, and President Roosevelt. He did so by merely asking whether Roosevelt's policies generated positive effects, and by looking at the evidence--mainly Roosevelt's own, often shocking words.

4 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A feeble attempt to rewrite history., December 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt Versus Recovery, 1933-1938 (Hardcover)

The millions of working class Americans who immediately felt the relief of FDR's new deal policies don't need a "conservative perspective" on the subject. This is a dry and compromised narrative that was written only to supply a contrary viewpoint with little regard to actual fact.