The New Dealers - by Jordan A Schwarz (Paperback)

About the Book

With scholarly depth and perception this engrossing narrative of 20th-century history sheds new light on both the New Deal and current debate of American industrial policy. Out of portraits of Brandeis, Corcoran, Lilienthal and others comes a book that conveys the true scope of Roosevelt's experiment.

Book Synopsis

This bold new analysis of the New Deal dramatically revises our vision of the Roosevelt legacy -- and of the new relation between government and business it made a central fact of American life. With impressive scholarship and narrative brio, Jordan A. Schwarz persuasively demonstrates that the New Deal's architects sought not merely to save an endangered American capitalism but to integrate economically underdeveloped regions of the nation within the scope of a dynamic state capitalism capable, after World War II, of dominating the global marketplace.

As he assesses the contributions of such figures as Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the legal and political "fixer" Thomas G. Corcoran, Texas legislators, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, and the quintessential New Deal industrialist Henry Kaiser, Schwarz produces a volume that should be required reading for anyone concerned with current American industrial policy. And he does so with a liveliness and depth of insight that make The New Dealers comparable to the best work of Arthur Schlesinger or Robert Caro.

Review Quotes

"A timely reminder that the debate over federal economic policies that took shape during the Great Depression has considerable relevance to the choices we face today." -- Newsday

"A significant contribution both to New Deal scholarship and contemporary policy debates." -- New Republic