American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work

I guarantee that if you go stand next to the water cooler, you'll get an impassioned perspective on "The New Deal" from someone who treats books like Kryptonite. They'll tell you FDR drained the treasury to reward lazy people and weakened America. They'll tell you all kinds of Cable News propaganda to make their point. Usually I'm so shocked by this nonsense that I...more

I guarantee that if you go stand next to the water cooler, you'll get an impassioned perspective on "The New Deal" from someone who treats books like Kryptonite. They'll tell you FDR drained the treasury to reward lazy people and weakened America. They'll tell you all kinds of Cable News propaganda to make their point. Usually I'm so shocked by this nonsense that I just shake my head and walk away. Needless to say, I'm biased. I'm biased toward a program that harnessed the best parts of America and built things like the San Antonio River Walk and LaGuardia Airport. I'm biased toward a program that planted trees to support the timber industry, trained young people to drive forklifts and to read, and actually delivered library books to people in rural Appalachia. I'm biased toward an administration that put restrictions on an investment market that both made America's savings accounts worthless and plunged the civilized world into financial chaos. And I am most definitely biased toward a program that built the foundations and administrative structures that enabled us to push the Nazis out of Western Europe and the Japanese back to their home islands. Taylor's book shows the bureaucratic and political problems (Roosevelt had to shut down several arts initiatives when radical Communists appeared in them; you won't hear that from the "fair and balanced" people)but it also describes Americans under pressure taking care of their own and making things right. If you anticipate another trip to the water cooler, I recommend you pick up "American-Made", do the intellectual heavy lifting, and stand up for what our grandparents accomplished, because the Greatest Generation is moving on in greater numbers and they deserve to be recognized, I think, for what they accomplished in the '30s, too.   hide