Read complete books and articles on: The New Deal

New Deal - in U.S. history, term for the domestic reform program of the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it was first used by Roosevelt in his speech accepting the Democratic party nomination for President in 1932. The New Deal is generally considered to have consisted of two phases.

The first phase (1933–34) attempted to provide recovery and relief from the Great Depression

The first phase (1933–34) attempted to provide recovery and relief from the Great Depression through programs of agricultural and business regulation, inflation, price stabilization, and public works. Meeting (1933) in special session, Congress established numerous emergency organizations, notably the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration. Congress also instituted farm relief, tightened banking and finance regulations, and founded the Tennessee Valley Authority. Later Democratic Congresses devoted themselves to expanding and modifying these laws. In 1934, Congress founded the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission and passed the Trade Agreements Act, the National Housing Act, and various currency acts.

The second phase of the New Deal (1935–41), while continuing with relief and recovery measures, provided for social and economic legislation to benefit the mass of working people. The social security system was established in 1935, the year the National Youth Administration and Work Projects Administration were set up. The Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938. The Revenue Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 provided measures to democratize the federal tax structure. A number of New Deal measures were invalidated by the Supreme Court, however; in 1935 the NRA was struck down and the following year the AAA was invalidated. The President unsuccessfully sought to reorganize the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, other laws were substituted for legislation that had been declared unconstitutional.

The New Deal, which had received the endorsement of agrarian, liberal, and labor groups, met with increasing criticism. The speed of reform slackened after 1937, and there was growing Republican opposition to the huge public spending, high taxes, and centralization of power in the executive branch of government; within the Democratic party itself there was strong disapproval from the "old guard" and from disgruntled members of the Brain Trust. As the prospect of war in Europe increased, the emphasis of government shifted to foreign affairs. There was little retreat from reform, however; at the end of World War II, most of the New Deal legislation was still intact, and it remains the foundation for American social policy.

See B. Rauch, History of the New Deal 1933–1938 (1944); A. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (1959) and The Politics of Upheaval (1960); M. Keller, ed., The New Deal: What Was It? (1963); R. Eden, ed., The New Deal and Its Legacy (1989); W. E. Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn (1995); G. E. White, The Constitution and the New Deal (2001).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: The New Deal

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Great Depression and the New Deal » Read Now
by Robert F. Himmelberg. 185 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This essential guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal provides a wealth of information, analysis, biographical profiles, primary documents and current resources that will help students to understand this pivotal era in American history. The author, an expert on this age of U.S. history and...
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This essential guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal provides a wealth of information, analysis, biographical profiles, primary documents and current resources that will help students to understand this pivotal era in American history. The author, an expert on this age of U.S. history and politics, brings to life the traumatic period that began in 1929 and ended only with America's entrance into World War II in 1941. He carefully explains the causes of the Depression, the actions taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt to lift America out of its economic morass, and the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the age.
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2.

The New Deal: The National Level » Read Now
by John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, David Brody. 341 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Modern America Number 4 THE NEW DEAL Volume One The New Deal The National Level Edited by John Braeman...Cataloguing in Publication Data Braeman, John. The New Deal. Modern...
3.

The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies » Read Now
by William H. Chafe. 340 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The New Deal established the contours and character of modern American democracy. It created an anchor and a reference point for American liberal politics through the struggles for racial, gender, and economic equality in the five decades that followed it. Indeed, the ways that liberalism has...
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The New Deal established the contours and character of modern American democracy. It created an anchor and a reference point for American liberal politics through the struggles for racial, gender, and economic equality in the five decades that followed it. Indeed, the ways that liberalism has changed in meaning since the New Deal provide a critical prism through which to understand twentieth-century politics. From the consensus liberalism of the war years to the strident liberalism of the sixties to the besieged liberalism of the eighties and through the more recent national debates about welfare reform and Social Security privatization, the prominent historians gathered here explore the convoluted history of the complex legacy of the New Deal and its continuing effect on the present. In its scope and variety of subjects, this book reflects the protean quality of American liberalism. Alan Brinkley focuses on the range of choices New Dealers faced. Alonzo Hamby traces the Democratic Party's evolving effort to incorporate New Deal traditions in the Cold War era. Richard Fried offers a fresh look at the impact of McCarthyism. Richard Polenberg situates Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in a tradition of liberal thought. And Melvin Urosfsky shows how the Roosevelt Court set the legal dimensions within which the debate about the meaning of liberalism would be conducted for decades. Other subjects include the effect of the Holocaust on relations between American Jews and African Americans; the limiting effects of racial and gender attitudes on the potential for meaningful reform; and the lasting repercussions of the tumultuous 1960s. Provocative, illuminating and sure to raise questions for future study, The Achievement of American Liberalism testifies to a vibrant and vital field of inquiry.
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4.

The New Deal and Its Legacy: Critique and Reappraisal » Read Now
by Robert Eden, Jon L. Wakelyn. 268 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

The New Deal remains at the center of the national debate concerning the role and function of government--a controversy that reflects increasingly deep divisions within the American body politic. Placing contemporary political issues in a broad, constructive framework, this book provides new...
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The New Deal remains at the center of the national debate concerning the role and function of government--a controversy that reflects increasingly deep divisions within the American body politic. Placing contemporary political issues in a broad, constructive framework, this book provides new perspectives on a pivotal episode in modern American history and gives us a deeper understanding of the political, economic, and constitutional challenges we currently face.
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5.

Economics in the Long Run: New Deal Theorists and Their Legacies, 1933-1993 » Read Now
by Theodore Rosenof. 228 pgs.

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Though understandably preoccupied with the immediate problems of the Great Depression, the generation of economists that came to the forefront in the New Deal Era of the 1930s also looked ahead to the long-term consequences of the crisis and proposed various solutions to prevent its recurrence...
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Though understandably preoccupied with the immediate problems of the Great Depression, the generation of economists that came to the forefront in the New Deal Era of the 1930s also looked ahead to the long-term consequences of the crisis and proposed various solutions to prevent its recurrence. Theodore Rosenof examines the long-run theories and legacies of four of the leading members of this generation: John Maynard Keynes of Great Britain, who influenced the New Deal from afar; Alvin Hansen and Gardiner Means, who fought over the direction of New Deal policy; and Joseph Schumpeter, an opponent of the New Deal.
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6.

Depression Decade: From New Era through New Deal, 1929-1941 (1947) » Read Now
by Broadus Mitchell. 457 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...DECADE From New Era through New Deal 1929-1941 By BROADUS MITCHELL...Depression Decade: From New Era through New Deal, 1929-1941 Board of Editors...economic policies and...
7.

Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era » Read Now
by Patricia Sullivan. 336 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

In the 1930s and 1940s, a loose alliance of blacks and whites, individuals and organizations, came together to offer a potent alternative to southern conservative politics. Days of Hope traces the rise and fall of this movement that helped shape the struggle for racial democracy in America.
8.

Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt versus Recovery, 1933-1938 » Read Now
by Gary Dean Best. 272 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

In this first sustained scholarly critique of the New Deal from the conservative perspective, Best argues that Roosevelt was, himself, the primary obstacle to American recovery from the Great Depression of 1933-38. Challenging conventional explanations that fault Roosevelt for not embracing...
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In this first sustained scholarly critique of the New Deal from the conservative perspective, Best argues that Roosevelt was, himself, the primary obstacle to American recovery from the Great Depression of 1933-38. Challenging conventional explanations that fault Roosevelt for not embracing Keynesian spending on a scale sufficient to produce recovery, Best finds the roots of America's slow return to economic health in Roosevelt's hostility to the very groups he should have been encouraging: the American business and financial communities.
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9.

Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943 » Read Now
by Patrick D. Reagan. 380 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

IN THE UNITED STATES, the idea of national planning has long been understood as a product of the Great Depression, part of the more general expansion of federal authority that characterized the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. Yet as Patrick D. Reagan shows in this well-researched study, the...
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IN THE UNITED STATES, the idea of national planning has long been understood as a product of the Great Depression, part of the more general expansion of federal authority that characterized the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. Yet as Patrick D. Reagan shows in this well-researched study, the origins of New Deal planning reach back much further than that. Beginning as early as 1890, a combination of intellectual and institutional developments -- from the emergence of the social sciences as a guide to rational management to the reform efforts of the 1920s -- prepared the way for the creation of the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) in 1933.
Reagan centers much of his analysis on the careers of five individuals who served on the NRPB during its ten years of existence: city and regional planner Frederic A. Delano; political scientist Charles E. Merriam; economist Wesley Clair Mitchell; business leader Henry S. Dennison; and philanthropic manager Beardsley Ruml. Drawing on their experiences in Progressive politics, mobilization for World War I, and the reform initiatives of the 1920s, these men steadily expanded the scope of national planning as advisers to the Roosevelt administration. During the Depression they joined in key debates over economic policy and executive branch reorganization, and during World War II they helped with plans for economic mobilization and proposed a vision for postwar America.
Although abolished by Congress in 1943, the NRPB remains a symbol not only of New Deal hopes and ambitions but of an enduring if ambivalent American faith in professional social and economic management.
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10.

Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought » Read Now
by Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. 307 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...AND UTOPIAS The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought by ARTHUR...To K. L. E. -vi- Preface THE NEW DEAL came to power in the midst of a profound...at the intellectual...
11.

The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933-1935 » Read Now
by Helen M. Burns. 208 pgs.

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...THE AMERICAN BANKING COMMUNITY AND NEW DEAL BANKING REFORMS 1933-1935 Contributions...THE AMERICAN BANKING COMMUNITY AND NEW DEAL BANKING REFORMS 1933-1935 Helen...The...
12.

The New Deal and Foreign Trade (1935) » Read Now
by Alonzo E. Taylor. 301 pgs.

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...THE NEW DEAL AND FOREIGN TRADE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY...COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO THE NEW DEAL AND FOREIGN TRADE By ALONZO E. TAYLOR...of foreign commerce...
13.

Toward a New Deal in Baltimore: People and Government in the Great Depression » Read Now
by Jo Ann E. Argersinger. 286 pgs.

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...Toward a New Deal in Baltimore Toward a New Deal in Baltimore People and Government in the Great Depression...Cataloging-in-Publication Data Argersinger, Jo Ann E. Toward a...
14.

Conservative Constraints: North Carolina and the New Deal » Read Now
by Douglas Carl Abrams. 294 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Constraints North Carolina and the New Deal Twentieth-Century America Series...Constraints North Carolina and the New Deal Douglas Carl Abrams UNIVERSITY...constraints :...
15.

The Road Not Taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief, in Presidential Studies Quarterly » Read Now
by June Hopkins. 11 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Road Not Taken: Harry Hopkins and New Deal Work Relief by June Hopkins...commitment to a work component in New Deal relief programs derived from his emphasis...Despite all...
16.

Dwight Eisenhower and the New Deal: The Politics of Preemption, in Presidential Studies Quarterly » Read Now
by Douglas B. Harris. 10 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Dwight Eisenhower and the new deal: the politics of preemption...relationship of Eisenhower to the New Deal regime established by Franklin Roosevelt...Eisenhowers motives...