General Books - Page 2

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States)

David M. Kennedy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

You can think of Freedom from Fear as the academic's version of The Greatest Generation: like Tom Brokaw, Stanford history professor David M. Kennedy focuses on the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War and how the American people coped with those events. But there the similarities end--and, in terms of the differences, one might begin by noting that the historian's account is over twice the size of the journalist's.

Whereas Brokaw made use of extensive interviews, Kennedy relies on published accounts and primary sources, all meticulously footnoted. This academic rigor, however, does not render the book dull--far from it. Certainly the subject matter is interesting enough in its own right, but Kennedy offers attention-grabbing turns of phrase on nearly every page. He also unleashes some convention-shattering theses, such as his revelation that "the most responsible students of the events of 1929 have been unable to demonstrate an appreciable cause-and-effect linkage between the Crash and the Depression" and his subsequent argument that, although it made order out of chaos, the New Deal did not reverse the Depression--that, he says, was the war's doing. All in all, Freedom from Fear compares favorably to its companions in the multivolume Oxford History of the United States in both its comprehensive heft and its vivid readability. --Ron Hogan

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

Tony Horwitz

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Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.

An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs—these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.

Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek—from Florida’s Fountain of Youth to Plymouth’s sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges—Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

Rethinking the Great Depression (American Ways Series)

Gene Smiley

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

new look at country's worst crisis 5 out of 5 stars.
35 of 38 people found this review helpful.

Based on new theories, Smiley has re-examined and re-assessed the forces that led to and prolonged the Great Depression. In clear non-technical prose, he shows what happened and why.

This short book (163 pages plus sources and index) is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of how the worldwide depression began and how it created a domino effect throughout Europe and the U.S. Nothing new here-- in fact, this is basic stuff any high schooler should know.

Chapter 2 is a more detailed examination of the economic crisis and the forces which led to it. Smiley explains the situation in basic terms that anyone can understand, allowing us to see the tragedy unfolding step by step.

Chapters 3 and 4 show how President Roosevelt (who had little knowledge or experience of economics) attempted to pull the country out of this deep economic slump. Though some programs were successful, some were not, and only serve to create a depression within a depression in the mid-30s.

Chapter 5 examines the legacy of the governmental response, and how economic policies initiated during this period has affected this country for decades afterward, and how certain government programs still exist long after their usefulness has passed. An examination of post-war analysis shows how Keynesian economic theory and government studies have misinterpreted the factors which brought this country back to recovery. He also examines the question of whether such an event can happen again, concluding that-- based on subsequent economic downturns-- it probably won't, though it can happen again should future leaders ignore the warning signs and lessons of the past.

A fascinating and rewarding book, even for those who have little or no knowledge of economics.

Editorial Review:

Drawing upon recent economic scholarship to present a clear and nontechnical analysis, Mr. Smiley offers new insights and some surprising conclusions about the causes of the Great Depression, the consequences of the New Deal, and the economic effects of World War II. An accessible survey...challenges the popular belief that the Great Depression demonstrates the instability of markets and the need for goevernment oversight and direction. --Journal of Economic Literature. A widely accessible and clearly written summary of the main causes of the Great Depression and its legacy for economic policy. --David C. Wheelock, EH.Net

Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression

David E. Kyvig

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not so much daily lives 3 out of 5 stars.
17 of 19 people found this review helpful.

My real interest in this book was to learn how ordinary people coped with life in a great depression. What interests me is in finding out how certain parts of society experienced it as I am sure the impact varies greatly.

This book - despite its title - clearly fails to answer this. Sure it tells me some of the reasons around the boom and bust, and some statistics on unemplyment, etc. But what I really wanted was the 'how they lived their lives' aspect that the title and blurb teased me with.

Despite my annoyance, I can't give this a 1 star (which is what it is worth to me) since it is a well written book and covers the topic well.

Editorial Review:

The twenties and thirties witnessed dramatic changes in American life: increasing urbanization, technological innovation, cultural upheaval, and economic disaster. In this fascinating book, the prize-winning historian David Kyvig describes everyday life in these decades, when automobiles and home electricity became commonplace, when radio and the movies became broadly popular.

Eyewitness to the Civil War

Steve Hyslop

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

At once an informed overview for general-interest readers and a superb resource for serious buffs, this extraordinary, gloriously illustrated volume is sure to become one of the fundamental books in any Civil War library. Its features include a dramatic narrative packed with eyewitness accounts and hundreds of rare photographs, artifacts, and period illustrations. Evocative sidebars, detailed maps, and timelines add to the reference-ready quality of the text.

From John Brown's raid to Reconstruction, Eyewitness to the Civil War presents a clear, comprehensive discussion that addresses every military, political, and social aspect of this crucial period. In-depth descriptions of campaigns and battles in all theaters of war are accompanied by a thorough evaluation of the nonmilitary elements of the struggle between North and South. In their own words, commanders and common soldiers in both armies tell of life on the battlefield and behind the lines, while letters from wives, mothers, and sisters provide a portrait of the home front. More than 375 historical photographs, portraits, and artifacts—many never before published—evoke the era's flavor; and detailed maps of terrain and troop movements make it easy to follow the strategies and tactics of Union and Confederate generals as they fought through four harsh years of war. Photoessays on topics ranging from the everyday lives of soldiers to the dramatic escapades of the cavalry lend a breathtaking you-are-there feeling, and an inclusive appendix adds even more detail to what is already a magnificently meticulous history.

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History)

David Hackett Fischer

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Total reviews: 86 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Indispensable for understanding the origins of the American Civil War 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

As someone with a keen interest in the American Civil War and its origins, I found Fischer's Albion's Seed to be extremely valuable. Although the period it describes is mostly colonial leading up to the American war for independence from England, the four folkways documented therein clearly delineate the religious, cultural, economic and even environmental forces that lined up to bring about that most seminal event for modern America, the war of 1861-1865.

The origins of slavery and why it took hold in tidewater Chesapeake areas and not Massachusetts are described by Fischer not only in terms of religious and social values but environmental as well in terms of differing mortality rates between African slaves in the two regions, thereby making slavery more economically feasible in Virginia. The regional culture of tidewater Chesapeake created slavery, not the other way around.

The controversy of territorial expansion of the United States in mid-nineteenth century, and whether these new lands would be slave or free, set the stage for the squaring off of the combined ideas of Puritan ordered liberty and Quaker reciprocal liberty (Lincoln was descended from both Puritans and Quakers) against the combination of hierarchical liberty of the tidewater cavaliers and the individualistic liberty of the people of the southern backcountry, who, although they owned few slaves, possessed an acute sense of personal honor and loved to fight.

It is a stretch to say that the American Civil War would have still happened without slavery. However, neither is it "Lost Cause" mythology to say that the North and South represented two distinct cultures, formed primarily by two each of the folkways of Albion's Seed. Had mid-nineteenth century America been one culture, then the slavery issue could certainly have been settled without warfare.

Editorial Review:

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.
While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

A People's History of American Empire

Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, Paul Buhle

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Adapted from the bestselling grassroots history of the United States, the story of America in the world, told in comics form Since its landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required classroom reading throughout the country, and been turned into an acclaimed play. More than a successful book, A People’s History triggered a revolution in the way history is told, displacing the official versions with their emphasis on great men in high places to chronicle events as they were lived, from the bottom up.

Now Howard Zinn, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki have collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of A People’s History: the centuries-long story of America’s actions in the world. Narrated by Zinn, this version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution. The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America’s leading historians.

Shifting from world-shattering events to one family’s small revolutions, A People’s History of American Empire presents the classic ground-level history of America in a dazzling new form.

The Great Depression: America 1929-1941

Robert S. Mcelvaine

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Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

New Deal as Seen from the Reagan Era 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 19 people found this review helpful.

This book was written in 1983, in the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. It's very interesting to see how angry the Reagan fans are at reading it. Biased! they cry, and so it is... forthrightly biased against Reagan, but intelligently skeptical toward the alleged success of Keynsian solutions to the Depression. Critics of FDR today seem widely to assume that the New Deal was strictly a Keynsian operation; McElvaine takes pains to distinguish FDR's policies from Keynesian thinking. Roosevelt, says McElvaine, was never a thorough Keynsian.

Historiography is a leapfrog occupation; the history written in 1983 becomes the source material of 2007. Much better statistical analysis of data from the 1930s is now possible because of computers. Letters and hidden files from the 1930s are now available. Thus "we" think ourselves better positioned to know what was really happening than poor Robert McElvaine, who wrote his book without our telescopic hindsight. The most interesting material in this still widely read textbook, for me anyway, is found in the last chapter, titled Perspective. McElvaine was highly alarmed at the economic policies he foresaw Reagan instituting. Here's what he wrote:

Keynsianism had offered a temporary way out of the Depression, but by itself it could provide no permanent solution. The fundamental problem in the economy remained maldistribution of income. ...there were some significant changes in income distribution in the United States between 1929 and 1981. There were important reductions in the shares going to the top 5 percent and the top 20 percent. Most of these declines...took place during the Great Depression. ...the redistribution from the top fifth went mostly to the second and third fifths; to the middle class. ...Although the poorest Americans have not benefited greatly, it is reasonable to conclude that the redistribution from the richest to the middle-income brackets helped sustain purchasing power in the postwar years of relative prosperity. Ronald Reagan's 1981 imitation of Andrew Mellon's tax cuts favoring the rich reversed this beneficial trend, and did so quite intentionally.

Yes, one can see why the Reaganites would hate this book! Later, McElvaine declares that the real solution to the Depression that emerged from the New Deal and wartime spending was to return to the old-time American faith in more or less constant expansion. Two factors, he argues, have prevented a major depression in the postwar years: the Keysian 'skills' the government had learned to apply to recession and inflation, and the ability of the many programs left from the New Deal to work automatically "to counter economic downturns."

If McElvaine were to write a 16th chapter to his book today, He'd have a lot to gloat about as a prophet. Reaganomics sharply reversed the redistributive justice of the New Deal, transferring wealth and ownership to the richest of the rich from the potential earnings of the middle class, and doing nothing to preclude the re-emergence of a poverty class just as miserable - though not as numerous in percentage - as the breadline unemployed depicted on the cover of this book.

Editorial Review:

A perennial backlist performer.

FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

Jim Powell

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Total reviews: 71 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Admirers of FDR credit his New Deal with restoring the American economy after the disastrous contraction of 1929—33. Truth to tell–as Powell demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt–the New Deal hampered recovery from the contraction, prolonged and added to unemployment, and set the stage for ever more intrusive and costly government. Powell’s analysis is thoroughly documented, relying on an impressive variety of popular and academic literature both contemporary and historical.”
–Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Hoover Institution

“There is a critical and often forgotten difference between disaster and tragedy. Disasters happen to us all, no matter what we do. Tragedies are brought upon ourselves by hubris. The Depression of the 1930s would have been a brief disaster if it hadn’t been for the national tragedy of the New Deal. Jim Powell has proven this.”
–P.J. O’Rourke, author of Parliament of Whores and Eat the Rich

“The material laid out in this book desperately needs to be available to a much wider audience than the ranks of professional economists and economic historians, if policy confusion similar to the New Deal is to be avoided in the future.”
–James M. Buchanan, Nobel Laureate, George Mason University

“I found Jim Powell’s book fascinating. I think he has written an important story, one that definitely needs telling.”
–Thomas Fleming, author of The New Dealers’ War

“Jim Powell is one tough-minded historian, willing to let the chips fall where they may. That’s a rare quality these days, hence more valuable than ever. He lets the history do the talking.”
–David Landes, Professor of History Emeritus, Harvard University

“Jim Powell draws together voluminous economic research on the effects of all of Roosevelt’s major policies. Along the way, Powell gives fascinating thumbnail sketches of the major players. The result is a devastating indictment, compellingly told. Those who think that government intervention helped get the U.S. economy out of the depression should read this book.”
–David R. Henderson, editor of The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics and author of The Joy of Freedom


The Great Depression and the New Deal. For generations, the collective American consciousness has believed that the former ruined the country and the latter saved it. Endless praise has been heaped upon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for masterfully reining in the Depression’s destructive effects and propping up the
country on his New Deal platform. In fact, FDR has achieved mythical status in American history and is considered to be, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of all time. But would the Great Depression have been so catastrophic had the New Deal never been implemented?

In FDR’s Folly, historian Jim Powell argues that it was in fact the New Deal itself, with its shortsighted programs, that deepened the Great Depression, swelled the federal government, and prevented the country from turning around quickly. You’ll discover in alarming detail how FDR’s federal programs hurt America more than helped it, with effects we still feel today, including:

• How Social Security actually increased unemployment
• How higher taxes undermined good businesses
• How new labor laws threw people out of work
• And much more

This groundbreaking book pulls back the shroud of awe and the cloak of time enveloping FDR to prove convincingly how flawed his economic policies actually were, despite his good intentions and the astounding intellect of his circle of advisers. In today’s turbulent domestic and global environment, eerily similar to that of the 1930s, it’s more important than ever before to uncover and understand the truth of our history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History 1775-1865 (Dover Thrift Editions)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The basic founding documents of American democracy 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

One can take two opposing approaches to this kind of volume. One can celebrate the treasures that are in it, or one can lament all the treasures it lacks. I prefer the first approach. For any volume which contains , The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington's First Inaugural and Farewell Speeches, Lincoln's First and Second Inaugurals and the Gettysburg Address contains the very heart of America's political thought and creed.
These documents are valuable not only politically, and historically they are also very great Literature.
There is much to be inspired by in the documents that are in this volume .Those seeking more important documents relating to American political life and democracy can find other volumes, whole libraries if they wish.
For what it is, this is just right.

Editorial Review:

Thirteen compelling and influential documents: Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death," Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, James Madison's The Federalist, George Washington's First Inaugural Address, The Monroe Doctrine, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, The Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, and more.