I found this book to be a not-very-balanced overview of the New Deal and the Great Depression. The author seems to think that current New Deal scholarship is universally positive and that someone desperately needs to break ranks and criticize it. This is obviously not the case.

Overall this is a valuable book with some very interesting insights into the era of the great depression, but I felt it didn't go deep enough into the subject, wrapped up in a hurry and jumped around a lot. A definite contrast to FDR as hero mythology. A warning tale for out time. It could have been better but was valuable none the less.

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

This book is not only written well, but also let's you in on the principal's thinking. It speaks of the feelings, for example, that was in some quarters when Wendell Wilkie was nominated to run against Franklin Roosevelt, for his third term. It tells you how Wilkie secured that nomination. It also tells you how the National Gallery got its start in Washington, with a donation by Andrew Mellon. It tells you of the feelings of people during the Depression who wanted nothing more than to earn a living, and get ahead in life. This book should be read by anybody who is interested in learning about the history of a period that helped shape our live.

My father was a young boy during the Great Depression and served our country in the Navy during World War II. As I was growing up I often wondered why he never had any kind words to say about Franklin Roosevelt. After reading this book I understand - the so-called "Progressive" movement that our country was submitted to back in the teens, the twenties, the thirties and even the forties really messed up the ability of our economy to "burn and churn" like it could if government got out of the way. Every high school age young person in our country should have to read this and discuss it with a teacher that isn't afraid to be objective. Thanks for writing this brilliant book !!!

I found the grammar in this book to be very poor. It was so distracting I had to stop reading. I don't understand how an editor would put a book to print that ends many sentences in dangling participles and others are just fragments that don't even pertain to the paragraph.

In my opinion this is very poorly written.

I'm a liberal, a believer in the social welfare state and a drinker of the "Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression kool-aid," from way back but I'm always intrigued by a powerful revisionist theory. Ms. Shlaes presents her argument in the introduction where she states that the question isn't how the Great Depression ended but why it lasted so long. Here she blames Roosevelt for too much intervention in the economy but she also blames Hoover for signing the Smoot Hawley tariff and for tinkering with the economy in an ineffective way. Roosevelt didn't tinker, according her, but employed big public works project modeled on the fascist and communist systems still looked at favorably in the early thirties by many people.

Unfortunately, she doesn't deepen her argument during the remainder of her book but dilutes it with too many asides about Bill Wilson's AA crusade, Father Divine's efforts to end lynching, Andrew Mellon's saintly gift of the National Gallery and many more. As I read these mildly interesting sidebars, I found myself wondering, "what does this have to do with the economics of the Great Depression?" She also weakly covers the political scene without adding much new insight or depth of analysis.

Another weakness is how she describes and discusses the TVA. She is not alone on this front. I have read elsewhere about what a big deal this was and then its described as building some big dams and generating electricity for lots of rural people. Maybe it's the having lived in Central California which is a product of irrigation and re-routing rivers but I need more context for this discussion. Was the TVA the first systematic attempt at this? How many people were employed? How many lives were changed and how? The way Ms. Shales presents it, the TVA is a giant bureaucracy attempting to get ever bigger and more powerful. There is some intimation that this is a bad thing but she doesn't make a strong argument for that either.

I thought her most effective section concerned the Schechter case that went to the Supreme Court which ruled the National Recovery Administration unconstitutional. She does a good job showing both the arbitrary and anti-democratic as well as anti-capitalist nature of the NRA as well as nicely describes the lowly everyman chicken butchers who tamed the New Deal. There is a list of characters at the beginning and we learn what happened to them after the thirties ended. This sums up the problem of this book; a thesis which is macro-focused on American economics and a method where mini-biographical sketches are weaved throughout the text to no particular purpose but to divert and distract from an argument proposed but never proved.

This book succinctly reveals that Socialism does not correct a Depression.

And the Democratics' Policies only makes Depressions deeper and longer.

I know, I lived through and survived the Great Depression, despite the
Socialistic Programs imposed by Roosevelt.

Ms. Shales' theory, in "The Forgotten Man", is that the actions of Franklin Roosevelt, and to a lessor extent Herbert Hoover, prolonged the Great Depression. Ms. Shales discusses a myriad of government programs and agencies which FDR created in an effort to end the economic downturn. Many of the people responsible for these agencies were great admirers of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Much of the socialism with which we are "blessed" today is a result of these "New Dealers". I believe that Ms. Shales' thesis is well founded. She does not, however, lead her readers to any definite conclusions. She offers bits and pieces of information from various sources to describe the actions of the Roosevelt administration, but she does not explain how these actions led to the continuation of the depression. The book bounces from event to event and person to person often without "connecting the dots".

Many people of the "Depression Generation" thought of FDR as a great saviour. Ms. Shales seems to be saying that FDR did more harm than good, specifically with regard to the economy. (The book ends prior to WWII and she does not dispute the idea that FDR was a great wartime president). I believe that she is correct in her thesis. Unfortunately, I think that she fails to lay out her supporting evidence in a cogent manner.

For everyone who thinks FDR should be granted sainthood, or thinks he has, read this and finally learn just how messed up and destructive this administration was to the US.

While the detail contained in Ms. Shlaes' book can seem daunting, the book reads well and provides some fascinating information. While the author covers well-known historical figures such as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover, Wendell Wilkie, Henry Morgenthau, and FDR himself, she also covers in detail lesser-known figures such as Rex Tugwell, the head of the Recovery Administration, and David Lilienthal, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority and erstwhile opponent of utilities CEO, Wendell Wilkie.

Ms. Schlaes has a whole chapter on National Recovery Administration's prosecution of the Schecter Brothers' kosher poultry business; this case, which went all the way to the Supreme Court proved to be the demise of the NRA. I found the chapter about the "Hour of the Vallar" where the money supply in the U.S. literally ran out in early 1933, to be fascinating.

I also learned much about the creation of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as such figures as Bill Wilson, the founder of "Alcoholics Anonymous, and Father Divine, a Harlem preacher who espoused self-reliance and self-improvement. I would have liked to have learned more about other figures such as Father Coughlin, a populist priest who had a successful radio show, and Huey Long, the Louisiana senator who was assassinated. To sum up: very good book with much valuable information about a dark time in our nation's history.

Overall I enjoyed the book a lot. Shlaes writes well and clearly. Her version of the Great Depression is original, unlike any other I have read; and I have read quite a few books on that subject.

The Forgotten Man is mainly about Franklin Roosevelt and his "New Deal." But it isn't a history. It is more of an informal account through which interesting political facts are woven.

I doubt that this is the book that the younger reader should read for information about the Depression. While I certainly recommend it for students of the subject, I believe it better for a novice to read a concise general history of the period before tackling TFM. I was born in 1930. Though I don't remember anything before around 1935, I remember much from that time forward. Additionally I have studied history and have an advanced degree (though not in history).
My point in mentioning all of the above is to let readers know that from my standpoint I enjoyed The Forgotten Man and was able to flesh out my store of knowledge by reading Shlaes' book about politics in the U.S. during the dark economic period 1929 through 1940. Most of the names were already familiar to me but I learned things about the principals I hadn't previously known. TFM has good material on Roosevelt's "whiz kid" brain trust of young, left-leaning advisors such as Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell and "Tommy the Cork" Corcoran. Shlaes also gave me additional information about financier Paul Mellon, and Wendell Willkie who was the 1940 Republican candidate against Franklin Roosevelt. I remember that campaign. And by the way, Shlaes mentions my home town of Brentwood, Missouri. She tells how our city hall was a federally-financed project circa 1935, which project is one of the first things I remember.

TFM is easily read and is a pleasure to read.

One reviewer characterizes The Forgotten Man as a "party line polemic," while another says it is "not a polemic." I hold to the latter view, but am not sure this is a plus. Maybe we need a polemic (argument or controversial discussion) about "the Great Depression" to counter some of the nonsense that has been written about it.

Amity Shlaes's book follows a cast of characters from 1927 (Herbert Hoover takes command of the great Flood on the Mississippi) to 1940 (FDR wins reelection to a third term). The players include government planners (Rex Tugwell, Harold Ickes), capitalists (Andrew Mellon, Wendell Wilkie, Alfred Loomis), economists (Irving Fisher, John Keynes), jurists ("the four horsemen," Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson), small businessmen (the Schechter brothers), labor leaders (John L. Lewis), social activists (Father Divine), and politicians (Herbert Hoover, FDR, and ultimately Wilkie).

Many of the incidents related are unflattering to the persons involved, including both Hoover and FDR, but Shlaes does not appear to have a partisan axe to grind. Indeed, she spends more time discussing the foibles, dreams, and conflicts of the characters than assessing their accomplishments. The narrative jumps around from person to person in a manner resembling "the grapevine" segment of the Brit Hume Show on Fox News.

The point is made (repeatedly) that the Depression went on longer than might have been expected if the Roosevelt administration had not sought to intervene in so many areas of the economy. Such a conclusion seems rather obvious, however, and it is hardly novel. If you are looking for an insightful analysis of what caused the Depression or the merits of the New Deal, you will not find it in this book.

Still, The Forgotten Man provides many interesting and at times telling details about the leading figures of the period across the political spectrum. It is worth reading for that purpose.

This is a great book and has given me a new perspective on the players that formed the results of the great depression.

I listen to the audio book version while driving from Jacksonville, Fl to Oklahoma City. It tells what appears to me a fair description of FDR handling of the problems of the Great Depression. It was a complicated situation that some programs had some success and some programs made the problems worse. It is a great story well told.