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

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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.

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.

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.