New Releases by Amity Shlaes

The author of the New York Times bestsellers The Forgotten Man and Coolidge offers a provocative and conversation-changing look at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and how its failures reverberate to this day. In Great Society, Amity Shlaes argues that just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal overshadowed a generation of forgotten men, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to a silent majority, a coterie of dispossessed citizens—made famous by Richard Nixon and celebrated by Donald Trump—who rejected what they saw as the federal government’s overreach. Drawing on her classic economic expertise and deep historical knowledge, Shlaes challenges the traditional narrative of 1960s America and Johnson’s experiment, recasting the story of the Great Society as a tale of hubris that remains consequential for America fifty years later. Contemporary Americans share many of the concerns that bedeviled Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and their voters. Racial differences, economic opportunity and outcomes, abuse of political power, and establishment corruption trouble us now just as these issues preoccupied the nation then. Yet today, poverty remains intractable and is actually growing, and the costs of programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are spiraling as the number of people claiming benefits grows. The question the Great Society tried to answer remains the same: how can we build a better future for all Americans? Shlaes contends that only an understanding of the historical record can make optimism—and practical solutions—possible. A deep analysis of the government policy that has shaped politics and society for fifty years, Great Society is an authoritative and well-reasoned reinterpretation of Johnson’s signature achievement and the momentous period in which it was conceived.

An illustrated edition of Amity Shlaes''s bestseller The Forgotten Man, featuring vivid black-and-white illustrations that capture this dark period in American history and the men and women, from all walks of life, whose character and ideas helped them persevere It''s difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era—the ones with rock-solid values that helped them through the toughest of times—can we really understand how the nation endured. These are the people at the heart of The Forgotten Man. This imaginative illustrated edition highlights one of the most devastating periods in our nation''s history through the lives of American people, from politicians and workers to businessmen, farmers, and ordinary citizens. Smart and stylish black-and-white art from acclaimed illustrator Paul Rivoche provides an utterly original vision of the coexistence of despair and hope that characterized Depression-era America. Shlaes''s narrative and Rivoche''s art illuminate key economic concepts, showing how government intervention helped to make the Depression great by overlooking the men and women who were trying to help themselves. The Forgotten Man Graphic Edition captures the spirit of this crucial moment in American history and the steadfast character and ingenuity of those who lived it.

Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, delivers a brilliant and provocative reexamination of America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, and the decade of unparalleled growth that the nation enjoyed under his leadership. In this riveting biography, Shlaes traces Coolidge’s improbable rise from a tiny town in New England to a youth so unpopular he was shut out of college fraternities at Amherst College up through Massachusetts politics. After a divisive period of government excess and corruption, Coolidge restored national trust in Washington and achieved what few other peacetime presidents have: He left office with a federal budget smaller than the one he inherited. A man of calm discipline, he lived by example, renting half of a two-family house for his entire political career rather than compromise his political work by taking on debt. Renowned as a throwback, Coolidge was in fact strikingly modern—an advocate of women’s suffrage and a radio pioneer. At once a revision of man and economics, Coolidge gestures to the country we once were and reminds us of qualities we had forgotten and can use today.

The Greedy Hand is an illuminating examination of the culture of tax and a persuasive call for reform, written by one of the nation''s leading policy makers, Amity Shlaes of The Wall Street Journal. The father of the modern American state was an obscure Macy''s department store executive named Beardsley Ruml. During World War II, he devised the plan for withholding taxes from your paycheck, thereby laying in place a system that allows the hand of government to reach into your wallet and take what it wants. Today, taxes make up more than a third of our economy, the highest level in history outside war. We live in the nation revolutionary father Thomas Paine foresaw when he wrote of "the Greedy Hand of government thrusting itself into every corner of industry." This book is a cultural examination of the way taxes influence our behavior, how they force us into an arbitrary system that punishes families and individual enterprise. Amity Shlaes unveils the hidden perversities of our lifelong tax experience: how family tax breaks do little to help the family, and can even hurt it. She demonstrates how married women pay a special women''s tax rate, higher than anybody else''s. She shows how problems that engage and enrage us--Social Security problems, or the things we don''t like about schools--are, at heart, tax problems. And she explains why the solutions Washington offers merely accelerate a vicious cycle. Finally, Amity Shlaes shows us a way out of this madness, endorsing a number of common-sense reforms that will give all Americans a fairer and simpler tax system. Written with eloquent compassion for working Americans and their families, The Greedy Hand makes the best case yet for rethinking our tax code. It is a book no tax-paying citizen can afford to ignore.

"Roosevelt stava mettendo a punto la sua definizione di uomo dimenticato. Fino ad allora era stato una figura generica, anche se sempre priva di mezzi... Adesso, identificando il suo uomo dimenticato con i gruppi specifici che voleva aiutare, il presidente stava dimenticando gli altri, creando così un nuovo uomo dimenticato. Il paese si stava spaccando fra i protetti da Roosevelt e tutti gli altri."Alla fine degli anni trenta negli Stati Uniti c''erano ancora situazioni di povertà dickensiana. Era trascorso del tempo ormai dalla crisi economica del 1929, dai primi interventi del presidente repubblicano Hoover, dall''elezione alla presidenza del democratico Roosevelt nel 1932 e dall''avvio della politica del New Deal, che nell''interpretazione storica corrente avrebbe posto fine alla Depressione. Ma perché allora, si domanda Amity Shlaes, la crisi durò tanto a lungo? Nella sua lettura liberista, furono proprio gli interventi del governo in ambito economico a rendere "grande" la Depressione. Hoover non credeva davvero nelle capacità del laissez-faire e del libero mercato e, come Roosevelt dopo di lui, non comprese la fondamentale salute e potenzialità di crescita dell''economia americana degli anni venti. Il New Deal dapprima creò insicurezza e sfiducia con una serie di esperimenti statalisti, poi finì per consolidare il potere delle lobbies. Molti rimasero così esclusi dalle preoccupazioni dell''amministrazione: poveri contadini, piccoli commercianti, cittadini i cui interessi e la cui condizione furono trascurati. Sono questi, per Shlaes, i veri uomini dimenticati – quelli in nome dei quali anche Roosevelt diceva di agire – che attesero una ripresa e un lavoro che, seppur promessi, non arrivarono. In questa nuova e non convenzionale interpretazione della storia della Grande Depressione e del New Deal – che inevitabilmente, fatte le debite differenze, si legge con il pensiero alla crisi economica attuale e a fenomeni populisti come il Tea Party – emergono, a fianco dei presidenti e dei loro collaboratori, le vicende degli oppositori, più o meno illustri, alle scelte del potere pubblico. Tra gli altri, il segretario al Tesoro Mellon, un magnate come Insull, il fondatore della Alcolisti Anonimi, il leader nero Father Divine, una famiglia di macellai kosher di Brooklyn.In un racconto corale dallo stile molto narrativo si delinea un originale spaccato di società e politica americane tra 1927 e 1940, a cui fa da controcanto l''evoluzione della storia in Europa, che con soluzioni autoritarie e totalitarie alla crisi si incammina verso la guerra.

''Die übliche Geschichte der Großen Depression kennen wir bereits. In den 1920er-Jahren erlebte Amerika einen Zeitraum falschen Wachstums und schlechter Moral. [...] Der Börsenkrach war das ehrliche Eingeständnis des Zusammenbruchs des Kapitalismus - und die Ursache der Depression. [...] Mit dem Crash ging ein Gefühl einher, dass die Wirtschaftslage von 1930 oder 1931 ohne umfangreiche Interventionen durch Washington nicht wieder aufleben konnte. Hoover, so sagte man, verschlimmerte die Situation durch seine unerbittliche Weigerung, die Kontrolle zu übernehmen, durch sein lächerliches Bekenntnis zu etwas, was er standhaften Individualismus nannte. Roosevelt jedoch verbesserte die Situation, als er das Ruder übernahm. Sein New Deal inspirierte und überschwemmte das Land. Auf diese Weise widerstand das Land einer Revolution, wie sie Europa erfasste und zu Boden warf. Ohne den New Deal wären wir alle verloren gewesen.'' Die Behauptung, dass die Demokratie ohne den New Deal in den USA gescheitert wäre, hielt sich sieben Jahrzehnte lang. Ebenso wie der New-Deal-Mythos, dass die ungehemmte Entfaltung des Kapitalismus, die letztendlich für die Krise verantwortlich gemacht wurde, nur durch das Eingreifen des Staates zu verhindern gewesen wäre. Der vergessene Mann zeigt nun, dass es sich lohnt in die Depression, die eine ganze Nation zu Boden warf, zurückzublicken, um mit diesem Glauben an den New Deal und die Politik Hoovers und Roosevelts aufzuräumen - um endlich ihre verlorene Geschichte aufzuspüren. Ungefähr ein halbes Jahrhundert vor der Großen Depression hielt William Graham Sumner, ein Philosoph an der Universität von Yale, eine Vorlesung gegen die Progressiven seiner Zeit und zur Verteidigung des klassischen Liberalismus. Aus der Vorlesung wurde letztlich ein Essay mit dem Titel ''The Forgotten Man'', das die Tatsache, dass Durchschnittsbürger oftmals für zweifelhafte Sozialprogramme aufkommen müssen, so erklärte: ''Sobald A etwas bemerkt, das ihm falsch erscheint und unter dem X zu leiden hat, spricht A darüber mit B und die beiden formulieren einen Gesetzesentwurf, um X zu helfen. Ihr Gesetz versucht festzulegen, was A, B und C für X tun sollen.'' Aber was ist mit C? Es war mit Sicherheit nichts falsch daran, dass A und B X helfen wollten. Was falsch daran war, war das Gesetz und dass C an diese ''gute'' Sache gesetzlich gebunden wird. C war der vergessene Mensch, der Mensch der bezahlen musste, ''der Mensch, an den niemand denkt''. 1932 münzte Roosevelt diesen Begriff für seine Zwecke um. Wenn er gewählt würde, versprach Roosevelt, würde er im Namen ''des vergessenen Menschen am Boden der Wirtschaftspyramide'' handeln. Während C der vergessene Mann Sumners war, machte der New Deal X zum vergessenen Menschen - den armen Menschen, den alten Menschen, den Arbeiter oder andere Empfänger von Hilfsleistungen der Regierung. Amity Shlaes widmet dieser folgenschweren Missinterpretation ein ganzes Buch, das uns die andere Wirklichkeit der Weltwirtschaftskrise unbarmherzig vor Augen führt. Ihre Geschichte behandelt das Leben von A, dem Progressiven aus den 1920er- und 1930er-Jahren, dessen gute Absichten das Land inspirierten. Noch mehr aber ist es die Geschichte von C, an den nicht gedacht wurde. Er war der Mensch in der Zeit der Depression, der nicht Teil irgendeiner politischen Zielgruppe war und deshalb die negativen Seiten dieser Zeit zu spüren bekam. Er war der Mensch, der die großen Projekte bezahlen musste, der Scheinarbeit anstatt echter Arbeit bekam. Er war der Mensch, der vergeblich auf das wirtschaftliche Wachstum wartete. Anhand einer Vielzahl spannender Geschichten dieser heute vergessenen Menschen entwirft die Autorin ein detailliertes Bild jener Zeit, das sich aufgrund der aktuellen Ereignisse in Wirtschaft und Politik beinahe wie eine Warnung liest.

It''s difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great—in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another. The Forgotten Man, offers a new look at one of the most important periods in our history, allowing us to understand the strength of American character today.