Topical Depression

The hallowed New Deal succeeded in making a bad economic situation worse

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The New Deal began 75 years ago this week, but its mythology is still fresh. Many Americans still believe that when Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the United States began to come out of the Depression. Not so, declares The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (HarperCollins, 2007), a splendidly written history of governmental economic intervention during 1930s America.

Author Amity Shlaes, a syndicated columnist for Bloomberg News and a senior fellow in economic history at the Council of Foreign Relations, has also worked at The Wall Street Journal and written books on German reunification and taxes in America.

WORLD: You've made a splash with The Forgotten Man. What's it about?