The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935, volume two of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s Age of Roosevelt series, describes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first tumultuous years in the White House. Coming into office at the bottom of the Great Depression, FDR told the American people that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. The conventional wisdom having failed, he tried unorthodox remedies to avert economic collapse. His first hundred days restored national morale, and his New Dealers filled Washington with new approaches to recovery and reform. Combining idealistic ends with realistic means, Roosevelt proposed to humanize, redeem, and rescue capitalism. The Coming of the New Deal, written with Schlesinger’s customary verve, is a gripping account of critical years in the history of the republic.
The Great Depression forced the United States to adopt policies at odds with its political traditions. This title looks at the background to the Depression, its social impact, and at the various governmental attempts to deal with the crisis.
The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement
Author: Neil M. Maher
Pubpsher: Oxford University Press
Category: Political Science
The Great Depression coincided with a wave of natural disasters, including the Dust Bowl and devastating floods of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Recovering from these calamities--and preventing their reoccurrence--was a major goal of the New Deal. In Nature's New Deal, Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism. Indeed, Roosevelt addressed both the economic and environmental crises by putting Americans to work at conserving natural resources, through the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC). The CCC created public landscapes--natural terrain altered by federal work projects--that helped environmentalism blossom after World War II, Maher notes. Millions of Americans devoted themselves to a new vision of conservation, one that went beyond the old model of simply maximizing the efficient use of natural resources, to include the promotion of human health through outdoor recreation, wilderness preservation, and ecological balance. And yet, as Maher explores the rise and development of the CCC, he also shows how the critique of its campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking trails, and motor roads frames the debate over environmentalism to this day. From the colorful life at CCC camps, to political discussions in the White House and the philosophical debates dating back to John Muir and Frederick Law Olmsted, Nature's New Deal captures a key moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism.
2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the New Deal, the series of programs initiated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help Americans recover during the Great Depression. Programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration gave hope, support, and encouragement to millions of Americans. Several New deal programs, including Social Security, continue to help Americans today.
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal began as a program of short-term emergency relief measures and evolved into a truly transformative concept of the federal government's role in Americans' lives. More than an economic recovery plan, it was a reordering of the political system that continues to define America to this day. With this book, writer Michael Hiltzik offers fresh insights into this inflection point in the American experience. He shows how Roosevelt, through force of personality, commanded the loyalty of the fiscal conservatives and radical agrarians alike--yet the same character traits that made him a great leader would sow the seeds of the New Deal's end. Understanding the New Deal may be more important today than at any time in the last eight decades. Conceived in response to a devastating financial crisis very similar to America's most recent downturn--the New Deal remade the country's economic and political environment in six years of intensive experimentation, and provided a model for subsequent presidents who faced challenging economic conditions, right up to the present.--From publisher description.
“A compelling and readable story of resistance to the new economic order.” —Boston Globe In the wake of the profound economic crisis known as the Great Depression, a group of high-powered individuals joined forces to campaign against the New Deal—not just its practical policies but the foundations of its economic philosophy. The titans of the National Association of Manufacturers and the chemicals giant DuPont, together with little-known men like W. C. Mullendore, Leonard Read, and Jasper Crane, championed European thinkers Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and their fears of the “nanny state.” Through fervent activism, fundraising, and institution-building, these men sought to educate and organize their peers as a political force to preserve their profit margins and the “American way” of doing business. In the public relations department of General Electric, they would find the perfect spokesman: Ronald Reagan. Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.