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The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression Paperback – Illustrated, May 27, 2008
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In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateMay 27, 2008
- Dimensions5.31 x 1.15 x 8 inches
- ISBN-109780060936426
- ISBN-13978-0060936426
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Amity Shlaes is among the most brilliant of the young writers who are transforming American financial journalism.” — Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times
“I could not put this book down. Ms. Shlaes timely chronicle of a fascinating era reads like a novel and brings a new perspective on political villains and heros―few of whom turn out to be as good or bad as history would have us believe.” — Arthur Levitt
“Americans need what Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish.” — George F. Will
“The Forgotten Man is an incisive and controversial history of the Great Depression that challenges much of the received wisdom.” — Harold Evans, author of The American Century and They Made America
“The Forgotten Man offers an understanding of the era’s politics and economics that may be unprecedented in its clarity.” — Mark Helprin
“Shlaes’s account of The Great Depression goes beyond the familiar arguments of liberals and conservatives.” — William Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard
“Amity Shlaes’s fast-paced review of the [Depression] helps enormously in putting it all in perspective.” — Paul Volcker
“The Forgotten Man is an epic and wholly original retelling of a dramatic and crucial era. There are many sides to the 1930’s story, and this is the one that has largely been lost to history. Thanks to Amity Shlaes, now it’s been re-found.” — Peggy Noonan
“Entertaining, illuminating, and exceedingly fair. . . . A rich, wonderfully original, and extremely textured history of an important time. — The American Spectator
“A well-written and stimulating account of the 1930s and its often dubious orthodoxies. . . . Ms. Shlaes rightly reminds us of the harmful effect of Rooseveltian activism and class-warfare rhetoric.” — The Wall Street Journal
“The finest history of the Great Depression ever written. . . . Shlaes’s achievement stands out for the devastating effect of its understated prose and for its wide sweep of characters and themes. It deserves to become the preeminent revisionist history for general readers. . . . Her narrative sparkles.” — National Review
“Captivating. . . . Illuminating. . . . The Forgotten Man is an engaging read and a welcome corrective to the popular view of Roosevelt and his New Deal. . . . A refreshingly critical approach to Franklin Roosevelt’s policies.” — Clive Crook, The Financial Times
“Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Depression in splendid detail, rich with events and personalities. . . . Many of Shlaes’s descriptions make genuinely delightful reading.” — The New York Review of Books
“The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes will forever change how America understands the causes of the Depression and FDR’s policies that prolonged it for a decade.” — Grover G. Norquist, The American Spectator
About the Author
Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man/Graphic, Coolidge, and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy.
Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Book Prize, and serves as a scholar at the King’s College. Twitter: @amityshlaes
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: #516,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #136 in United States Local Government
- #16,062 in United States History (Books)
- #39,769 in Reference (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Amity Shlaes is proud to announce the publication of GREAT SOCIETY: A NEW HISTORY (HarperCollins). Many readers will remember THE FORGOTTEN MAN, a history of the 1930s. This book is the sequel, treating the Great Society programs of the 1960s, as well as the underdescribed efforts of the private sector-- far more important than we remember.
Miss Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, COOLIDGE, THE FORGOTTEN MAN, THE FORGOTTEN MAN/GRAPHIC and THE GREEDY HAND.
Miss Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. She chairs the Hayek Prize, a prize for free market books given by the Manhattan Institute.
She is a presidential scholar at the Kings College/New York.
Miss Shlaes has been the recipient of the Hayek Prize, the Frederic Bastiat Prize of the International Policy Network, the Warren Brookes Prize (2008) of the American Legislative Exchange Council, as well as being a two-time finalist for the Loeb Prize (Anderson School/UCLA).
She is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale College and did graduate work at the Freie Universitaet Berlin on a DAAD fellowship. She and her husband, the editor and author Seth Lipsky, have four children.
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As the author riffs through the era (she begins in 1927 and ends in 1940), she devotes each chapter to a specific topic, although without skipping around in time. Among the highlights for me were her description of the time some left-wingers, many of whom would end up in FDR's cabinet or his "Brain Trust," sailed the Atlantic to visit Stalin's USSR, and were thrilled to have met the dictator; how the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the NRA (National Recovery Act) in a suit brought by four kosher chicken merchants from Brooklyn; and the apprehension of indicted entrepreneur Samuel Insull, who had fled to Turkey after an escape from . . . oh, but that would be telling. The efforts of Hoover's treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, to present the nation with a national art gallery fascinate, too. Ms. Shlaes, naturally enough, also spends time describing FDR's financial experiments and his technique of playing his advisers off each other.
The forgotten man of the the title, as explained in the quotation in the book's headnote, is "C," the taxpayer, who is dragged into the fray however reluctantly when "A" and "B" attempt to come to the aid of "X." As you will see, though, FDR (as had Hoover) was thinking of "X" when he referred to the forgotten man. Ms. Shlaes, of course, begs to differ.
And maybe she has a more specific forgotten man in mind too. That would be entrepreneur Wendell Willkie, to whom the author gives major props. Once renowned, he's now pretty much remembered, if at all, as the unsuccessful GOP presidential nominee in 1940. You'll probably think after you finish the book he deserved a better fate than to have wound up as an answer to a trivia question. He gets one here.
Warning for ideologues: FDR takes some lumps, although no doubt his reputation will survive the author's skeptical (but far from bashing) analysis, and she's no kinder to Hoover.
Most new jobs today (over 70%) are created by small business and it was no different then, but capital went on strike because of government competition not to mention investor uncertainty over FDR's changing policies. Financing of small businesses fell by 96% and initial public offerings (IPO's) went in the tank. This created an uphill fight for FDR in his pursuit to right the economy.
Does this sound like what's happening today? Where government takes money from one pocket and puts it into another while running up huge debts at excessive cost to the economy? And did not George W. Bush set the stage for Obama just as Herbert Hoover did for FDR? In Both Hoover/FDR's case and Bush/Obama's they and their administration's are seeking to right a typical financial bust by using Keynesian methods which will over time make it worse for everyone. Utopian socialism won't work if history is any guide.
The title "The Forgotten Man" is a phrase taken from a piece penned by William Graham Sumner of Yale in 1881, one which alludes to the common taxpayer who is coerced defacto into financing utopian political dreams . In the end result stock and real estate prices did not recover for 25 years after the Crash, but targeted political constituencies? They continued to vote Democratic in House and Senate races for decades. In short FDR's was a successful political power grab at the cost of socializing the economy. The seeds of today's economic problem were sewn in the 1930's and this is the tale Amity Shlaes tells so well.
The book begins with a description of its "cast of characters" and follows with a coda describing their lives post the Depression years: Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU; Father Devine, Harlem preacher of black self-sufficiency and leader of thousands; Harold Ickes, FDR's Secretary of the Interior and key reformer with the TVA; Samuel Insull, Chicago electrical utility magnate; Cordell Hull, FDR's Secretary of State; Herbert Hoover, President from 1929 to 1933; John L. Lewis, Labor leader and head of the United Mine Workers and founder of the CIO; Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under three presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover); Rex Tugwell, an advisor and member of FDR's brain trust; Wendel Wilkie, head of Commonwealth & Southern, a new utility; plus David Lilienthal, Ray Moley and many others. Some stay true to Roosevelt and his utopian dreams while others leave the fold after seeing the futility of his efforts to grow GDP and concomitantly lower unemployment.
The stock market crash of black October, 1929; the Disastrous effect on world trade created by the Smoot-Harley tariff under Hoover; the tsunami of bank insolvencies; the building of the TVA (a government run utility under FDR); the alphabet agencies overseeing labor, housing, banking, securities trading, and trade of every type; FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court; his punitive pursuit of the rich centering on Andrew Mellon (who gratis gave the country his fabulous art collection); the rise of Wilkie to 1940 presidential candidate; it's all there and it's a great story that reads like today. But as Henry Morgenthau, FDR's treasury head, said "after eight years of trying and more than tripling government spending, we still haven't lowered unemployment" (or words to that effect.) Keynesian demand-side economics didn't work. It's multiplier effect a sophist mythology.
World War II made the unemployed into soldiers subsequently solving the unemployment problem during the war years, but only pent up demand and the passing of FDR and his crazyquilt pursuit of utopia brought the economy slowly back into balance. To my view this story is a blueprint of what's to come in the next eight years. Hopefully it isn't, but where there's hope, there's hope, and that's that.
A very good and timely read!
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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.







