About the Book

The Great Depression was one of the most difficult periods in American History. Conventional interpretation holds that Roosevelt’s New Deal array of government programs, along with the onset of World War II, helped to save the country. However, Amity Shlaes challenges this interpretation in The Forgotten Man.

Shlaes argues that as heroic as FDR was, his economic planning often made things worse, and probably made the Depression last even longer. The end of the Depression was brought about more by the economy’s natural tendency to correct itself, along with the character and driving spirit of the American people. Featuring expert economic analysis and firsthand accounts of life during the Depression, The Forgotten Man is a much needed reevaluation of a decade that engendered social, economic and political changes that still affect us today.

Amity Shlaes is a visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a syndicated columnist at Bloomberg. She has written for the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, where she was an editorial board member, as well as for The New Yorker, Fortune, National Review, The New Republic, and Foreign Affairs. Shlaes is the author of The Greedy Hand. She lives in New York.

“Were John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman to spend a century or two reconciling their positions so as to arrive at a clear view of the Great Depression, this would be it.” — Mark Helprin

Critical Praise

“Amity Shlaes is among the most brilliant of the young writers who are transforming American financial journalism.” — Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times

“I could not put this book down. Ms. Shlaes timely chronicle of a fascinating era reads like a novel and brings a new perspective on political villains and heros—few of whom turn out to be as good or bad as history would have us believe.” — Arthur Levitt

“Americans need what Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish.” — George F. Will

“The Forgotten Man is an incisive and controversial history of the Great Depression that challenges much of the received wisdom.” — Harold Evans, author of The American Century and They Made America

“The Forgotten Man offers an understanding of the era’s politics and economics that may be unprecedented in its clarity.” — Mark Helprin

“Shlaes’s account of The Great Depression goes beyond the familiar arguments of liberals and conservatives.” — William Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard

“Amity Shlaes’s fast-paced review of the [Depression] helps enormously in putting it all in perspective.” — Paul Volcker

“The Forgotten Man is an epic and wholly original retelling of a dramatic and crucial era. There are many sides to the 1930’s story, and this is the one that has largely been lost to history. Thanks to Amity Shlaes, now it’s been re-found.” — Peggy Noonan

“Entertaining, illuminating, and exceedingly fair. . . . A rich, wonderfully original, and extremely textured history of an important time. — The American Spectator

“A well-written and stimulating account of the 1930s and its often dubious orthodoxies. . . . Ms. Shlaes rightly reminds us of the harmful effect of Rooseveltian activism and class-warfare rhetoric.” — The Wall Street Journal

“The finest history of the Great Depression ever written. . . . Shlaes’s achievement stands out for the devastating effect of its understated prose and for its wide sweep of characters and themes. It deserves to become the preeminent revisionist history for general readers. . . . Her narrative sparkles.” — National Review

“Captivating. . . . Illuminating. . . . The Forgotten Man is an engaging read and a welcome corrective to the popular view of Roosevelt and his New Deal. . . . A refreshingly critical approach to Franklin Roosevelt’s policies.” — Clive Crook, The Financial Times

“Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Depression in splendid detail, rich with events and personalities. . . . Many of Shlaes’s descriptions make genuinely delightful reading.” — The New York Review of Books

“The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes will forever change how America understands the causes of the Depression and FDR’s policies that prolonged it for a decade.” — Grover G. Norquist, The American Spectator

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780066211701
• ISBN 10: 0066211700
• Imprint: Harper
• On Sale: 06/12/2007
• Trimsize: 6.000 in (w) x 9.000 in (h) x 1.490 in (d)
• Pages: 480
• List Price: $26.99
• BISAC1 : HISTORY / General
• BISAC2 : HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
• BISAC3 : POLITICAL SCIENCE / American Government / State
• BISAC4 : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / General