The forgotten man

So I've read this new book by Amity Shlaes on the Great Depression, called "The Forgotten Man", which has gotten a lot of buzz lately. I can see why. It's good narrative history, covering the 1920s, Coolidge and Hoover, the coming of the Depression, and then Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. I don't know that it's quite as novel or path-breaking as some have seemed to imply. She argues for example that Herbert Hoover was not the inactive, rock-ribbed conservative, do-nothing-while-the country-crumbled president that some have made him out to be; that instead, he was a progressive interventionist whose spending as president was unprecedented at the time. But this isn't new; Paul Johnson made this case persuasively years ago in his classic work Modern Times. She argues that Roosevelt purposely sought to seek long-term electoral success by having the New Deal reach out to certain groups, such as labor, blacks, farmers, etc. But this idea of a "Roosevelt coalition" isn't new either. Shlaes does however do an excellent job of showing how the New Deal sometimes hurt "the forgotten man" as much as it helped him (see for example her chapter on the Schechter family, famous for the Schechter Supreme Court case) and how it at times messed up the economy as much as it helped it, which is often inescapable when it comes to government intervention. She points out the pain felt by the country in the 1937-38 recession, the blame for which has been skipped over by many historians, but which has to be laid at the New Deal's door. And she demonstrates how Wendell Willkie tried to capitalize on the New Deal's faults in 1940--but ultimately failed. A good read, and it's good that an interpretation that challenges the New-Deal-as-savior theme is out there.