FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
A damning indictment of the New Deal. Lest we forget, it was not the New Deal that got America out of the Depression, it was World War II.
Regards, Ivan
Ivan,
FDR's economic policies were mostly empty feel-good guestures that did not address the true causes of the depression.
However, as I stated on another thread today, on the one big issue of his time, the war agaist Nazi Germany and an expansionist Japan, he was dead on. He did everything he could to get the country ready for war while far too many people had blinders on about the coming threat. He also did everything he could to keep the British Empire in the war (and yes the Soviets too....).
These actions (lend-lease, the draft and the rebuilding of a shell of a military) were critical to saving the world and overshadow the major domestic mistakes of 1933-1939 and the foreign policy mistakes of late 1944-early 1945.
In this he is like Tony Blair, who is wrong on so many things, (don't get me started), but who has kept Britian in the current war. (Though Blair is more wrong and not as right as FDR was, FDR did not weaken the armed forces in the middle of a war the way Labour has.)
When looking at FDR you have to keep the big picture in mind.
I concur. I borrowed the book from a friend of my son's they are both Economics major's in college. Both are also staunchly conservative.
Ivan,
If you like that, I would also recommend "Wilson's War:How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II" by the same author. Another excellent book