The New Deal -- A Modern History by Michael Hiltzik, Free Press '11, $30, 497 pages, ASIN #1439154481. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.
In his latest work, journalist Michael Hiltzik deconstructs the Great Depression as a model for President Obama to follow this time around while dispelling "decades of accumulated myths and misconceptions about the New Deal, to capture its origins, legacy, and its genius." Arguing against revisionists who hold that the New Deal failed to end the Depression, he makes a number of controversial points: that the U.S. economy grew a whopping 8% per year between 1933--37, that the unemployment rate fell from 23% in 1932, Hoover's last year, to 9% in 1937, that the Dow Jones Average nearly quadrupled in thos years, and that while FDR used no fiscal stimulus from 1933-37, he treated the onset of a sudden recession in 1938 with large scale public works and unemployment relief that "stopped the recession in its tracks." Michael Hiltzik received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for articles exposing corruption in the entertainment industry.
Is Marriage for White People? -- How the African-American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone, by Ralph Richard Banks, Dutton '11. $25.95, 289 pages, ASIN #0525952012. Index, partial bibliography, notes, unillustrated.
One of the most pernicious outcroppings of slavery was the destruction of the African-American family, as slaveholders split up families willy-nilly for financial gain. And while emancipation removed that barrier, at least in theory, historian Ralph Richard Banks writes that "over the past half-century, African Americans have become the most unmarried people in our nation," not simply among the poor but among the affluent and professional class as well. "Black women of all socioeconomic classes remain single in part because the ranks of black men have been decimated by incarceration, educational failure, and economic disadvantage." Yet instead of seeking out men of other races, Banks argues, such women -- especially college-educated women -- remain unmarried or marry a less well-educated man of their own race. (Banks finds twice as many black women than men hold college degrees).This is not a book for whites to read smugly, for marriage among them have declined sharply as well. "The terrain of marriage and intimacy," Banks holds, "is shifting for everyone, as never before." Ralph Richard Banks isthe Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.
Freedom for Women -- Forging the Women's Liberation Movement, 1953-1970, by Carol Giardana, UPress of Florida, 321 pages, ASIN #0813036925. Index, bibliography, notes, grouping of b&w images.
From the book cover: "In this richly detailed firsthand history of the contemporary Women's Liberation Movement, scholar-activist Carol Giardina examines the rich soil of the Black Freedom Movement and Left politics out of which the Women's Liberation Movement grew and concludes that it was not just omnipresent male chauvinism that stimulated a resurgence of feminism. Instead, she contends, it was the ideas, resources, and skills that women gained in the 1960s movements that were the new and necessary catalysts for launching this audacious new front." Carol Giardina is visiting assistant professor of history at Queen's College in New York and a pioneer of the 1960s Women's Liberation Movement.
A Free and Hardy Life: Theodore Roosevelt's Sojourn in the American West by Clay S. Jenkinson, foreward by Douglas Brinkley, The Dakota Institute '11, oversized format, $45, 176 pages, ASIN #098255978X. Index, dozens of b&w images.
A recent cold snap reminded me that gift-giving season isn't far away. Simultaneously, the first of, I anticipate, scores of coffee-table books crossed our desk. And for American history buffs, this pictorial biography of Teddy Roosevelt from his childhood through and beyond the presidency. In a brief Q&A, historian Clay S. Jenkinson discusses the writing of his new book:
Q. Who is your Theodore Roosevelt?
A. We tend to think of Roosevelt as a man of action. His contemporary Henry Adams, the great grandson of John Adams, said TR was like the God of scholastic philosophers, "pure act." But that's not fair. Roosevelt was a Renaissance man. He read a book a day. He wrote approximately 40 books. He had what his severest biographer acknowledges as a photographic memory. He knew a number of European languages. Roosevelt is a unique mix of qualities. A bonafide war hero and an authentic rancher and cowboy, he was one of the boldest and most powerful presidents in American history who led the people of America -- sometimes kicking and screaming -- into the twentieth century. He is a much bigger, richer, more complex figure than the run up San Juan Hill suggests. I love the man of adventure, the rancher who punched out a drunken gunslinger in a bar out on the Montana border. But that is only one facet of a variegated life.
Q. Why did you feel it was important to focus on this part of Roosevelt's life?
A. I'm a North Dakotan, a historian, and a lover ofthe national parks and monuments. When I was growing up in Dickinson, North Dakota, we were told that in 1910, while he was in Fargo, Roosevelt said he would never have become president of the United States were it not for the time he spent in North Dakota. I had always asumed that was a kind of pro forma statement, the kind a traditional politician makes in a number of locations. So my general research goal has been to try to find out how the Dakota badlands shaped Roosevelt, and whether they make the big difference in his life he claimed.
