Tag Archives: New Deal
Wednesday’s Book Review: “Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government”
Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government. By James T. Sparrow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. This book has a simple, but elegant, thesis: The author challenges the longstanding belief that FDR’s New Deal, … Continue reading
Might We Renew the Promise of American Life?
I was struck while rereading Herbert Croly’s 1909 political manifesto, The Promise of American Life, about its continually important message. Croly was a leading figure in the Progressive Movement of the first two decades of the twentieth century, a political philosopher, … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “American-Made”
American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, When FDR Put the Nation to Work. By Nick Taylor. New York: Bantam, 2008. Nick Taylor has written an elegant general history of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the legendary federal agency from … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World”
The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World: Southern Civil Rights and Anticolonialism, 1937-1955. By Lindsey R. Swindall. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. This is a moderately interesting, marginally satisfactory study of two organizations operating between the 1930s and … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism”
The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. By Robert William Fogel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Nobel Laureate Robert William Fogel (1926-2013) upset the historical discipline throughout his entire career. One of his first major works, Railroads … Continue reading
Wednesday’s Book Review: “School Book Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present”
School Book Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present. By Joseph Moreau. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. The premise of School Book Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks from the Civil War … Continue reading
Reflecting on Christopher Lasch and “The Culture of Narcissism”
I remember how impressed I was when I first read The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (Norton, 1979) while in graduate school in the early 1980s. Although it is certainly dated, having just reread … Continue reading
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