The Forgotten Man

By: Amity Shlaes

Narrated by: Terence Aselford

Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation.

Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs.

The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great, in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another. The Forgotten Man, offers a new look at one of the most important periods in our history, allowing us to understand the strength of the American character today.

©2007 Amity Shlaes (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"A thoughtful, even-tempered corrective to too often unbalanced celebrations of FDR and his administration's pathbreaking policies." ( Publishers Weekly)

Had To Put It Down

This is the first audiobook I've had to stop listening to because it was too boring.

To avoid future mistakes, we must study the past

The Forgotten Man is the perfect book for the times we are in now. It reminds us of the lessons this country learned the hard way through the 1930s. Many of those lessons are not being taught in today's schools. This book lends credence the same philosophy my college economics professor taught. That philosophy is that no one can spend and borrow their way to prosperity. Ms. Shlaes' book taught me that in the 1930s is was possible to go to jail for selecting a specific live chicken for sale rather then grabbing the closest one to the door. She showed us what happens to common stock holders like you and I when government competes against private companies. To compare what happened through the 1930s to what is happening now is frightening. Everyone should read this (or listen to) this book.

great book

it was an honest look on the depression not through rose (ivelt) colored glasses. i recomend this book to everyone who asks about it

Absolutely critical book

ABSOLUTELY critical book to read, to really understand the great depression and the prewar Roosevelt administration.

History is written by the victors...

... and hopefully "rewritten" by more objective eyes.

The history repeating itself right before our eyes can help us understand The Depression. The same ideologies and self-interested representations are again at work today

Today, Democrats try to ensure that the official history of our economic crisis says it was caused by Wall Street greed, the failure of capitalism and Bush economic policies. Future objective "rewrites" will include neglected inconvenient facts: Democrats refused to regulate the unintended consequences of their economically unsound "spread the wealth via affordable housing" policies.

The Depression was no different. Those Democrats were fascinated by and experimented with the same socialistic fascism promoted by Mussolini and Hitler - long before their extreme versions of fascism became malignant. Politicians asserted it was a failure of capitalism in order to justify a socialist "solution". Thereafter, the sanctioned history was written by the victors and those who still champion these ideals, proclaiming them successful, beyond reproach and "settled" through a consensus of everyone - except the "deniers".

Learning from the tragic history of our ancestors and noting the differences and, especially, dramatic parallels between the 1920-40s and 1990-2010's could help us navigate today's dangerous waters. However, our vision must be 20/20. We must ensure our official histories are free from ideological bias and political motivations.

This book shines a brighter light on this era, a "revision" long overdue. The personalities, ideologies, agendas and political history of the main characters (e.g., Mellon, Hoover, Roosevelt, the 1920's and 1930's...) are practically ripped right out of todays headlines.

Another excellent "rewrite" that'll give context for this era is "Liberal Fascism" - still actively at work in the 2008 Election.

So timely!

This is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand how government can ruin markets by misunderstanding how they work. The knee-jerk reaction of Washington to market correction is what make the great depression last so long and has put us on this trajectory of dependence and welfare! AWSOME BOOK that dispationaatly states the facts!

Very informational

I learned a lot about the Depression that I did not know.

The Real Great Depression

Read this book as an antidote to the pablum they fed you in high school.

If Amity Shlaes Writes It, I Listen to It

I'm a big fan of Amity Shlaes writing. She takes complex topics like the Depression (and the federal war on poverty three decades later) and brings the events to life. Unlike a history textbook, she develops the human stories - the relationships among key subjects, their motives, their thoughts, and the results of their actions. She is a meticulous researcher who uncovers obscure but poignant angles to the players and the events.

Example: Do you know why Social Security is funded by a payroll tax, unlike every other federal entitlement program (except Medicare, which is built on the Social Security chassis)? I didn't, until I learned who whispered into whose ear how a dedicated tax would affect the constitutionality of the program.

The author goes into minds, into cabinet rooms, into boardrooms, and into bedrooms to provide a detailed picture of the major characters of the era: President Roosevelt, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, businessman and then presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, Ambassador Averell Harriman, and many, many more.

If you like dry history books that recite the events as a newspaper would, don't listen to Amity Shlaes. You'll find it takes too much time to mine the few nuggets of facts that you want. But if you want to understand the "why" behind so much of what happens during the periods about which she writes, you can't call your education complete without devouring Ms. Shlaes' work.

Good Historical Book

Terrific book to learn about the cause and resolution of the Great Depression. There is a lot of information to take in so be prepared for information over loaf at times.