The Forgotten Man Amity Shlaes Summary

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Impact of the Great Depression The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, written by Amity Shlaes, gives a lengthy detail of the Great Depression. According to her viewpoint the government handled the situation of the economic crisis very poorly, which led to the Great Depression lasting longer than it suppose to. In this book, Shlaes wrote about observed action taken by Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. She gave a detail of the years from 1927 to 1940 and in the beginning of every chapter she mentioned the unemployment rate and the average of Dew Jones Industry. According to Shleas, the Great Depression had major impacts on America life, American values and American Government. First of all, the Great …show more content…

During the Great Depression “the currency was becoming more valuable every day, rarer and scarcer” (Shlaes 108). The Great Depression was the reason to change and reform government. Even though Shlaes wrote Roosevelt and his New Deal made the Depression stay longer, but in reality to recover from the Great Depression, Roosevelt New Deal helped economy to get back in track. The New Deal made the government to be more involved in people’s life. New Deal used Government as an agent and started to intervene in the economic institution in order to recover from the failure. Roosevelt New Deal plan also helped businesses to recover from the Depression loss. Shlaes mentioned in 1934, “Business has recovered half its depression loss, only 30 percent of the Depression unemployed has been put to work” (Shlaes 262). Also, to help recovery from the Great Depression, the New Deal offered social insurance; “Social Security seemed a gift on a scale most American would never have expected a president to be able to offer” (Shlaes 255). The Great depression impacted the Americana government in a way that the government had to change, reform and became more cautious of economic situations. This book seemed to give a great detail of the time period of the Great Depression and the impact of it. The author, Shlaes seemed very bias toward her opinion as she stated, “all the changes brought by the New Deal meant that the United States seemed a less reliable place” (Shlaes 336). She did not seem to like Roosevelt and the New Deal, but nevertheless, she seemed to give a great detail of the impacts of the Great depression on American life and how it changed their values and also how it impacted the American

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