Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
The New Deal - A Modern History - cover

We are sorry! The publisher (or author) gave us the instruction to take down this book from our catalog. But please don't worry, you still have more than 500,000 other books you can enjoy!

The New Deal - A Modern History

Michael Hiltzik

Publisher: Free Press

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

“A sweeping, lively survey of the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to restart the American economy nearly 80 years ago.” —Kirkus Reviews 
 
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal began as a program of short-term emergency relief measures and evolved into a truly transformative concept of the federal government’s role in Americans’ lives. More than an economic recovery plan, it was a reordering of the political system that continues to define America to this day. 
 
With The New Deal: A Modern History, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Michael Hiltzik offers fresh insights into this inflection point in the American experience. Here is an intimate look at the alchemy that allowed FDR to mold his multifaceted and contentious inner circle into a formidable political team. The New Deal: A Modern History shows how Roosevelt, through the force of his personality, commanded the loyalty of the rock-ribbed fiscal conservative Lewis Douglas and the radical agrarian Rexford Tugwell alike; of Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins, one a curmudgeonly miser, the other a spendthrift idealist; of Henry Morgenthau, gentleman farmer of upstate New York; and of Frances Perkins, a prim social activist with her roots in Brahmin New England. Yet the same character traits that made him so supple and self-confident a leader would sow the seeds of the New Deal’s end, with a shocking surge of Rooseveltian misjudgments. 
 
Understanding the New Deal may be more important today than at any time in the last eight decades. Conceived in response to a devastating financial crisis very similar to America’s most recent downturn—born of excessive speculation, indifferent regulation of banks and investment houses, and disproportionate corporate influence over the White House and Congress—the New Deal remade the country’s economic and political environment in six years of intensive experimentation. FDR had no effective model for fighting the worst economic downturn in his generation’s experience; but the New Deal has provided a model for subsequent presidents who faced challenging economic conditions, right up to the present. Hiltzik tells the story of how the New Deal was made, demonstrating that its precepts did not spring fully conceived from the mind of FDR—before or after he took office. From first to last the New Deal was a work in progress, a patchwork of often contradictory ideas. Far from reflecting solely progressive principles, the New Deal also accommodated such conservative goals as a balanced budget and the suspension of antitrust enforcement. Some programs that became part of the New Deal were borrowed from the Republican administration of Herbert Hoover; indeed, some of its most successful elements were enacted over FDR’s opposition. 
 
“Mr. Hiltzik presents the New Deal as an adventure made all the more thrilling by the uncertainty of its outcome.” —The Wall Street Journal
Available since: 09/13/2011.
Print length: 514 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • No Place Like Murder - True Crime in the Midwest - cover

    No Place Like Murder - True...

    Janis Thornton

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    “This engrossing collection of historical Midwest murders reads like a thriller. True crime at its best. I couldn’t put it down.” —Susan Furlong, author of the Bone Gap Travellers novels 
     
    A modern retelling of 20 sensational true crimes, No Place Like Murder reveals the inside details behind nefarious acts that shocked the Midwest between 1869 and 1950. The stories chronicle the misdeeds, examining the perpetrators’ mindsets, motives, lives, apprehensions, and trials, as well as what became of them long after. 
     
    True crime author Janis Thornton profiles notorious murderers such as Frankie Miller, who was fed up when her fiancé stood her up for another woman. As fans of the song “Frankie and Johnny” already know, Frankie met her former lover at the door with a shotgun. 
     
    Thornton’s tales reveal the darker side of life in the Midwest, including the account of Isabelle Messmer, a plucky young woman who dreamed of escaping her quiet farm-town life. After she nearly took down two tough Pittsburgh policemen in 1933, she was dubbed “Gun Girl” and went on to make headlines from coast to coast. In 1942, however, after a murder conviction in Texas, she vowed to do her time and go straight. Full of intrigue and revelations, No Place Like Murder also features such folks as Chirka and Rasico, the first two Hoosier men to die in the electric chair after they brutally murdered their wives in 1913. The two didn’t meet until their fateful last night. 
     
    An enthralling and chilling collection, No Place Like Murder is sure to thrill true crime lovers. 
     
    “Thornton wittily describes heretofore unheralded true crime stories from Indiana’s small towns.” —Keven McQueen, author of Horror in the Heartland
    Show book
  • Evolution Is Wrong - A Radical Approach to the Origin and Transformation of Life - cover

    Evolution Is Wrong - A Radical...

    Erich von Däniken

    • 1
    • 1
    • 0
    A Fascinating Exploration on Why the Darwinists’ Theory No Longer Explains Everything 
    There was once a set of ideas called the theory of evolution, conceived by clever people and confirmed by countless scientists. Then people discovered the electron microscope. This made it possible to make the molecules within the cell visible, and suddenly questions about evolution arose that were not possible before. Which force actually bundles the atoms in the right order? What moves the molecular chains into the correct position? How did the first living unit within the cell actually come about? How does inheritance work, how does information pass on to the next generation? Did humans descend only and exclusively from primates—as Charles Darwin and countless other great minds assumed—or did additional “engines” intervene in evolution?  
    Today it is clear: countless questions can no longer be answered with the previous theory of evolution. There is a form of life called “Blob” (Physarum polycephalum). The “thing” has neither eyes nor ears, neither a mouth nor a nose or even a brain. Nevertheless, it takes in food, overcomes obstacles by the shortest route and exchanges information with other “blobs.” The “blob” contradicts any evolutionary thought that one develops from the other. Or the “gastric-brooding frogs” (Rheobatrachus) found in Australia. They hatch their young in the stomach. Impossible in a slow, evolutionary process.  
    Everywhere there are characteristics of animals that do not want to fit into the theory of evolution anywhere. And man? Are we really the most adapted life-form on this planet? Today, more and more scientists who contradict the previous theory of evolution speak out. The theory fits the changes within the species, but it can no longer be reconciled with the inner workings of the cell. Some other influence that has so far escaped us is affecting evolution. It is called “Intelligent Design.” Intelligent planning is suspected behind this. Anyone or anything—a spirit of the universe? Aliens?—could be behind this planning.  
    Erich von Däniken uses countless examples to demonstrate the impossibility of the previous evolutionary idea. He quotes scientists who argue against the previous teaching, but also those who defend it. Unfortunately, established science still refuses to look at discrepancies and holes in the theory of evolution, even though it is quite obvious that there is more going on with regard to the development of all species, as well as human culture, than could be explained by the theory of evolution alone.
    Show book
  • Putin's Russia - Life in a Failing Democracy - cover

    Putin's Russia - Life in a...

    Anna Politkovskaya

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    A searing portrait of a country in disarray and of the man at its helm, from "the bravest of Russian journalists" (The New York Times)Hailed as "a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness" (New Statesman), Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in Chechnya. Here, she turned her steely gaze on the multiple threats to Russian stability, among them Vladimir Putin himself.Rich with characters and poignant accounts, Putin's Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents must pay bribes to recover their dead sons' bodies, and conscripts are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And she offers a scathing condemnation of the war in Chechnya, where kidnappings, extra-judicial killings, rape, and torture beget terrorism rather than fighting it. Finally, Politkovskaya denounces both Putin, for stifling civil liberties as he pushes the country back to a Soviet-style dictatorship, and the West, for its unqualified embrace of the Russian leader.Sounding an urgent alarm, Putin's Russia is a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and intrepid reporter, who received death threats and survived assassination attempts for her scathing criticism of the Kremlin. Tragically, on October 7, 2006, Politkovskaya was shot and found dead in an elevator in her Moscow apartment building. After several years of investigations, five men were imprisoned for her murder.
    Show book
  • The Secret of Chimneys - cover

    The Secret of Chimneys

    Agatha Christie

    • 0
    • 2
    • 0
    At the request of George Lomax, Lord Caterham reluctantly agrees to host a weekend party at his home, Chimneys. A murder occurs in the house, beginning a week of fast-paced events with police among the guests...
    
    The Secret of Chimneys, by master-author Agatha Christie, introduces the much-loved characters of Superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent.
    Show book
  • More Foul Deeds & Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield - cover

    More Foul Deeds & Suspicious...

    Kate Taylor

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    A historic account of the Northern England city’s crimes, including misdeeds that shed light on past ways of life—from death by neglect to police killings.   How the body of a Wakefield murder victim was exhibited for a fee in 1853, the odd story of a Normanton miner attacked by a prosperous Crofton gentleman in 1875, the tragic death of a twenty-one-year old woman on what should have been her wedding day in 1909, and the case of the Sandal dental lecturer who killed his adopted daughter in 1966 are among the many foul deeds recounted in More Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield.   In a companion volume to Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield (2001), Kate Taylor has assembled more than fifty further accounts of horrific deaths in or near Wakefield. Some killings reflect the tensions and resentment of domestic life but there are mysteries too like the case of a man found dead in 1860 in a shallow beck with no marks of violence on him. In an incident in Horbury involving the death of a baby in 1849 it was the assistant constable pursuing the inquiries who died. The book shows something of the cultural context that can promote murder—the stigma of illegitimacy in the past and the more recent risks of glue sniffing and the appalling bullying of immigrants. Take a journey into the darker and unknown side of your area as you read More Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield.
    Show book
  • Not So Merry Wakefield - cover

    Not So Merry Wakefield

    Kate Taylor

    • 0
    • 1
    • 0
    The life and times of a Wakefield woman in the late twentieth century with substantial local historical information. The book aims to echo Henry Clarkson's memories of Merry Wakefield (1887) but with more sombre overtones reflecting experiences of single parenthood, time in the local mental hospital and the trauma of a fatal car accident, but with good times too.
    Show book