Overall, a book I learned a lot from and a book that confirmed my suspicions about the validity of what I learned about the Great Depression in history classes.Īn examination of the Great Depression by a fiscal conservative. I read it at the computer with wikipedia open though because she makes references to people and events that I guess are common knowledge (?), but doesn't explain who or what they are. It is written like a history book, but for the most part it was easy to read. In fact, the book begins by showing that there was a depression within the depression caused by FDR's New Deal ideas discouraging businesses/individuals to save money and by over-regulating some industries and trying to make other industries government owned. This book also crushes the myth that FDR was the savior of the country because of New Deal programs. He made the Great Depression worse by implementing anti-business policies at a time when we needed business to grow more than ever. It destroys the myth that Hoover made the Great Depression worse by using capitalism. FDR relied on advisers that visited the USSR and saw the sanitized version of Communism that Stalin wanted them to see they even visited with Stalin! But instead, they jumped on the Soviet bandwagon and tried to implement Socialist programs. It really illustrates that if the politicians would have stuck to free market principles the Great Depression would not have been so great. This was a wonderful history of the Great Depression from a policy-making/political standpoint.
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