A Concise History of the New Deal [Hardcover]

This book provides a history of the New Deal, exploring the institutional, political, and cultural changes experienced by the United States during the Great Depression.This book provides a concise narrative history of the New Deal, exploring the important institutional, political, and cultural changes experienced by the United States during the Great Depression. Going into much greater depth than other recent histories of the period, this book integrates a command of the scholarly literature with a lively, engaging narrative.This book provides a concise narrative history of the New Deal, exploring the important institutional, political, and cultural changes experienced by the United States during the Great Depression. Going into much greater depth than other recent histories of the period, this book integrates a command of the scholarly literature with a lively, engaging narrative.During the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal carried out a program of dramatic reform to counter the unprecedented failures of the market economy exposed by the Great Depression. Contrary to the views of today's conservative critics, this book argues that New Dealers were not anticapitalist in the ways in which they approached the problems confronting society. Rather, they were reformers who were deeply interested in fixing the problems of capitalism, if at times unsure of the best tools to use for the job. In undertaking their reforms, the New Dealers profoundly changed the United States in ways that still resonate today. Lively and engaging, this narrative history focuses on the impact of political and economic change on social and cultural relations.1. A global depression; 2. Saving capitalism, 19334; 3. The New Deal at high tide, 19346; 4. Society and culture in the 1930s; 5. Opposition and backlash, 19379; 6. Legacies of the New Deal. Jason Scott Smiths book could not be more timely. He has written what now must be regarded as the best one-volume history of the New Deal. Hló.