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Product details

• ASIN : 0060936428
• Publisher : Harper Perennial; Illustrated edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 512 pages
• ISBN-10 : 9780060936426
• ISBN-13 : 978-0060936426
• Item Weight : 13.3 ounces
• Dimensions : 5.31 x 1.15 x 8 inches

• Best Sellers Rank: #42,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #868 in Economics (Books)
  • #2,009 in United States History (Books)
  • #5,461 in Reference (Books)

• Customer Reviews:
  4.5 out of 5 stars 1,038 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5 out of 5

1,038 global ratings

5 star		70%
4 star		17%
3 star		7%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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GD

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have ever read

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2017

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I love this book.
Amity Shales is not just an accurate writer she is engaging. I read this book a few years ago & it really opened my eyes beyond the canned history I got in school. I can't remember who I loaned it out to & apparently they loved it because it was never returned to me! I was happy to re-buy the book for my children.
Lord of the Flies was a seminal book in my childhood - it made me want to read everything. The Forgotten Man is a seminal book of my adulthood - I became a voracious reader of history after reading this book.
Thank you for writing it!

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54 people found this helpful

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AG

1.0 out of 5 stars Who is this for? Too dense, scattered, academic.

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2020

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I usually love history books. I’ve been on an American history kick for a year or so. Despite the great reviews I just founded it scattered, dense and academic.

It would very frequently introduce new characters with zero context and zero connective tissue to the preceding text. And then cover a bunch of other stuff only to abruptly pick up prior storylines.

It was also quite dense. Lots of detail on seemingly little things but left out a lot of what I wanted to learn. What was life like for basic families? How did homeless survive? What industries grew? Almost nothing on these topics but detail upon detail of the finance secretary’s art collection and all the drama (zzzz) of how it became donated to the US.

It feels like this was a collection of facts that needed to be stored somewhere and it was just sorta copy and pasted together.

Out of respect to the author I hate to give a negative review but I feel it valuable to future readers.

I’d like to believe the book was just over my head and there’s some obvious-to-others reason why it’s so great!

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12 people found this helpful

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Robert Lemmon Jr

5.0 out of 5 stars Will History Repeat Itself with Another Great Depression?

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2017

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In his most recent book, "The Road to Ruin," financial writer James Rickards recommends "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes -- and that's because he believes the coming collapse could be either deflationary or inflationary. And there is no better example of deflation than The Great Depression in the 1930s.
Some give FDR the credit for ending that deflation while others credit World War II with being the main terminator.
While many liberals flocked to the the Roosevelt's administration, in the end the "forgotten man" ended up paying for FDR's many experiments.
Mrs Shlaes spent many years researching those experiments. And while she lists many of her sources, such as Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday," she understandably omitted Allen's "Since Yesterday," a competing history of the 1930s
I get the impression that Mrs Shales wishes she had been able to make the trip to Russia and speak with Joseph Stalin. As one who has worked both in the public sector (as a teacher) and the private sector (as a commodity broker) I firmly believe Harry Truman's statement that the only thing new under the sun is the history we have not read. In other words history repeats itself.

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28 people found this helpful

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William Bilyeu

5.0 out of 5 stars A great history of a depressing era

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2020

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Amity Shlaes is an excellent historian and writer. I enjoyed her biography of Coolidge and I enjoyed this wonderful history. I am a historian and I learned things from this book that I did not know, and it spurred research. The more I learned about the "New Deal" the more I found to criticize about it. It has long been shown that the liberal, progressive, socialist reforms of the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, and Ms Shlaes presented more evidence of communist ideology and influence that too few people understand even today. After reading Coolidge and The Forgotten Man, I ordered Great Society, another history of the futility of government practices and programs. The history of the New Deal shows the government officials ineptitude, incompetence, and willingness to put people on trial for political purposes, and the stupidity and tyranny of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who admired Stalin and in many cases imitated him.

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6 people found this helpful

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Fred Shoemaker

5.0 out of 5 stars A new history interpreting things . . . differently, especially FDR.

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2018

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I enjoyed this book. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the actions of FDR and his associates. It was especially interesting and shocking to read how FDR determined the spot price of gold. I always assumed he used the principles of economics, his use of 'lucky numbers' came as a complete shock. It was also interesting to read the description of the so-called 'Great Engineer' Herbert Hoover. It was not kind to him. One of the few public figures to come out well was Andrew Mellon. One wonders if things would have gone differently if only Hoover had listened to him instead of firing him!

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16 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Having a grad degree in economics, this was by far the best book I have read on the subject

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2020

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Amity puts the depression into stark, human terms by describing the plight of the common man and the confusion brought on by the political decisions made. It was a difficult time, and there have been endless debates about whether Smoot Haley, the Federal reserve, business, etc. are at fault. It is a complex argument, lining up the Austrian school on one side, and John M keynes on the other.

In the end, you have to draw your on conclusions. But this book will provide an important viewpoint that is essential in coming to your own ideas.

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7 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book ever on The Great Depression

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2017

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The best book ever written on The Great Depression. Professor Shlaes hit the grand slam homer. This should be a must read for all prior to graduation from any university. It explains so many things that I had heard from my parents over the years. This masterpiece is the icing on the cake for that era.

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16 people found this helpful

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Bob Whitmore

5.0 out of 5 stars More than the depression, you learn much more

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2020

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Amity has a super fine book. From the origin of the Wall Street Crash to the depression and the blunders made by FDR and his men are in the book. Read this book and you will not think of the Great Depression as you may have prior. This truth had to be told and she tells it well. It is my view that the socialist era of the USA began with FDR and is still happening. Consider who makes the laws. We are ruled by Democrats. Were Democrats called a king, this nation would revolt again.

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Bookworm

5.0 out of 5 stars New Coths for the New Deal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2018

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This book challenges the received wisdom concerning the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression that followed. It begins by describing the suicide caused by the impact of the Great Depression - and then informs the reader that the suicide occurred in 1938, when unemployment and bankruptcy had returned almost to the level of 1931, the worst year of the recession. Indeed Shlaes contends that but for the war 1939 and 1940 might have been worse, and Roosevelt would not have won his third term, if he had chosen to stand again.
Shlaes argues that the twenties were not a frivolous decade - the USA made enormous advances and the companies that survived contributed to the post-war boom as well.
She disputes the idea that all Republicans were laissez faire - in particular Hoover both believed in state intervention, and did everything that he could to prop up the banks and stabilize the economy. That he failed was not the consequence of indifference, or indeed a lack of Keynesianism - he intervened more than Roosevelt did in his first term of office. Indeed Roosevelt's "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" is a Moneterist not a Keynesian proposition.
She then goes through some individual cases. Wenvil Wilkie, who went bust, went alcoholic, but then recovered both personally and financially, to unsuccessfully challenge Roosevelt in 1940. She follows the legal prosecution of the bankers, who got the blame - rather than the Stock Market. The outcome was a lot of money spent, no convictions, but some sizeable art donations that have enriched New York's galleries ever since.
There is a fascinating chapter on how whole counties - having lost faith with both the goverment and the financial institutions, just set up their own, including their own currencies. Other states set up a system of exchange, defining how much corn or meat a car repair or a dress might be worth. Though I do not think she comments on this - such a mass opt-out must have impacted upon goverment revenues, and limited the power of the state to intervene.
She describes how many American politicians and in particular the Democratic Party were both deceived and besotted by Stalin and the Soviet Union, and how some hoped to use the New Deal, which finally took off in Roosevelt's second term, to promote his policies in the USA.
In one area Roosevelt was very successful - he won over the entertainment industry - and securred its attachment to both the New Deal and the Democratic Party. As a baby boomer I found it interesting that far from being an hobo, Woody Guthrie was paid well for travelling round the country and writing socialist and fraternal hymns. By winning over the entertainment industry Roosevelt has influenced the way that we all see the Great Depression, and how economists and modern news media see the world through Keynesian eyes.
Though she does not explicitely say this, I could only conclude that WW2, allowed the New Deal to work. It suspended all normal economic intercourse, allowed the USA to sell to the combatants, but critically the USA won. It won big - for a generation all of its economic rivals, Britain, Germany, Japan and Russia were crippled by the cost or the damage of war. This is a very good read.

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Bobski

5.0 out of 5 stars History

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2019

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Very very illuminating. Dispels a lot of myths.

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Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 3, 2016

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This book explores the Great Depression from a new and very human angle. It should be read by any with an interest in that period.

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Key Perspective

2.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat tedious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 25, 2017

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Hard going

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RENATO MONTEIRO OLINO

4.0 out of 5 stars Muito bom, mas cansativo em alguns momentos...

Reviewed in Brazil on August 14, 2020

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O livro traz muitos detalhes sobre a vida dos políticos e demais pessoas influentes nos USA na época da depressão. Muitas histórias interessantes, mas por vezes a leitura ficava cansativa.

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