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Loading... The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depressionby Amity Shlaes
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Its uncanny what FDR did to expand (  )rayme52 | Jun 24, 2009 |   The Forgotten Man is a book that is packed with information. It recounts The Great Depression from several different viewpoints. There are snippets of thought(complete with quotes)of the major players including Roosevelt and Hoover but we also learn of lesser known characters such as Rex Tugwell, Andrew Mellon and Raymond Moley. Since I am primarily a visual learner, I struggled quite a bit with the volume of information contained in this audiobook. It would have been much easier for me to absorb the information if I had been reading a physical copy. However, non-fiction is one genre that I find well-suited to audio so that’s why I chose this one. I found The Forgotten Man fascinating and there were several times that I wanted to make notes about the parallels to the things that I see happening today. However, because I was busy doing other things as I was listening, that didn’t happen. The overall theme I came away with this book was that though it may have been well-intentioned, the experimentation done by Roosevelt and other people during this time in history actually prolonged The Depression. We see some of the same things being repeated today as far as huge spending versus scaling back and reducing the deficit. In all honesty, though I found this a fascinating book as I was listening, I didn’t retain a lot of it. I would like to revisit the print version because there is a wealth of information there. In light of current events, I highly recommend reading this one. Just take notes (  )SleepyReader | Jun 16, 2009 | I am about half way through and have found this to be a very interesting book to read. The author give lots of deal about the players, especially Herbert Hoover. ( )fletcher1235 | Jun 4, 2009 | This is refreshing revisionist history, uncovering the policies of a federal government that, rather than ending the depression, prolonged the agony of the depression until the economics of WWII brought it to an end. With a storytelling style and specific examples of the follies of the time Shlaes provides an alternative view of this era. She provides an appraisal of it that is sorely needed by those who would continue to mismanage our economy today. ( )jwhenderson | Apr 12, 2009 | It's a difficult listen with a lot of dates and names that seem to run together. I also expected more analysis on how the FDR admin. wasn't as successful as common history would have you believe. It was more of a run down of events that happened during the 1930s. (  )lanes_3 | Feb 7, 2009 | 0.055 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0066211700, Hardcover)It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. These are the people at the heart of Amity Shlaes's insightful and inspiring history of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Some of those figures were well known, at least in their day—Andrew Mellon, the Greenspan of the era; Sam Insull of Chicago, hounded as a scapegoat. But there were also unknowns: the Schechters, a family of butchers in Brooklyn who dealt a stunning blow to the New Deal; Bill W., who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the name of showing that small communities could help themselves; and Father Divine, a black charismatic who steered his thousands of followers through the Depression by preaching a Gospel of Plenty. Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great—in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another. Authoritative, original, and utterly engrossing, The Forgotten Man offers an entirely new look at one of the most important periods in our history. Only when we know this history can we understand the strength of American character today. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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