The Age of Frances Perkins

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes is a rare object: it is an economically-literate history book written for the general reader.  That combination is depressingly rare--mostly because economists are notoriously bad writers and popular authors know notoriously little economics.  This book, though, is a very nice tale about the Great Depression--giving vivid portraits of Hoover and FDR as well as a host of other characters.  (And, in what will endear the book to MHC students and alums--Frances Perkins comes off rather well in the book.  I assigned this book in my intro class; I suspect it is the first time most of the students learned anything about Frances Perkins beyond the fact that there is a subset of MHC students called Frances Perkins scholars (For non-MHC folks, the Frances Perkins scholars are "nontraditional students" which in effect means they are over the age of 21 or they are married or they have children when they matriculate.).)  (Also, by the way,  in her convocation speech, Lynn  referred to Frances Perkins as a former Secretary of the Treasury--so apparently the confusion about who she was extends up to the President's office as well.) 

The big lesson of the book is something macroeconomists have known for some time, but has never permeated the popular conscience:  the New Deal was a miserable failure.  It never did any good, and may in fact have prolonged the Great Depression.  In the cartoon history of the Great Depression which is in high school history books, the New Deal saved the economy.  But when you actually go back and look at the range of the New Deal programs and evaluate what they actually did, it's hard to find anything coming out of the New Deal which had and immediate positive effect on the economy

I think Hoover comes off better than FDR in the book, but not much better.  In fact the other big lesson of the book is that Hoover and FDR really didn't differ all that much in the types of things they were trying during the Depression. 

The most curious character in the book is Father Divine--I had never heard of him before.  (Here is a 7 minute intro, or you can just read Shlaes' book.)  [When I was having lunch with George Nash after I read the book, I talked to him about it, and threw out a few oddities like the existence of Father Divine--he knew about every one of them--plus, of course, he added a bunch more interesting anecdotes about the era--someday I will discover a bit of historical trivia about the Hoover era or the history of conservatives which is unknown to George, and then I will be able to say to that moment, "Tarry a while! you are so fair!"]

All in all, The Forgotten Man is a pretty good book if you like reading history books.  Lots of great stories which capture the whole era.

Incidentally, the reason I decided to assign the book in my intro class was because I am really tired of hearing people talk about current events as if we are in a situation comparable to that of the 1930s.  There is no way to read something about the 1930s and think modern times are anywhere near the same neighborhood.