The Great Depression, by Robert S. McElvaine

About the highest praise I can honestly bestow this terrible book is that not everything that the author says is wrong. This is not high praise, but it is reflective of one of the main problems of this book, and that while the author can at times make correct statements on the micro level, his conclusions and sweeping statements on the macro level are invariably wrong and equally invariably biased in service of his political commitments to the left wing of the Democratic Party. For example, the author states that FDR’s New Deal ultimately did not end the Great Depression, but takes from this the conclusion that in order to have solved the Depression without World War II would have taken drastic socialist measures that the author, of course, would support but that were fortunately beyond the capability of our Republic, even in the 1930s, to pass into law. Similarly, the author states that Hoover was not the monster he was thought to be and that FDR was inexcusably hypocritical in his political dealings, but praises FDR as a politician largely because he was successful and a Democrat, while condemning Hoover because he was a Republican, while reveling in the notoriety he had as a president in that it helped the author’s narrow and partisan political aims. The author seemingly cannot decide if he wants to be a serious historian interested in the facts, or merely a partisan hack who uses anecdotal evidence and ad hominem attacks on conservatives and businessmen to serve his own base political purposes, although unfortunately usually and ultimately his hackery wins out over whatever principles he has as a historian.

This book is about 350 pages long and it is divided into fifteen chapters. The author begins with acknowledgements and a foreword. He then discusses historical currents–which he analysis in a predictably biased fashion (1)–as they relate to the Great Depression. This is followed by a discussion of the 1920s as the origin of the Great Depression, which rings a bit hollow when one looks at the importance of World War I as setting up the Great Depression (2). The author then discusses the life and career of Herbert Hoover (3), about which the author cannot be authoritative given his perspective. After this the author discusses “nature taking its course,” which amounts to misguided attempts at high tarrifs (4) during the first part of the Depression. This is followed by a generally flattering account of FDR as a lord of the manor, that paternalist and corrupt European-type aristocrat (5), whom the author views fondly, evidence of his own corrupt nature. The author follows this by a discussion of 1932 (6) as well as the first hundred days of FDR’s presidency (7). The next few chapters are more thematic in nature, looking at depression life (8), a particularly risible view of moral economics and American values during the Depression (9). After this, the author discusses the rising theft and political anarchy of the left in 1934-1935 (10), as well as the resulting and largely ineffective so-called Second New Deal (11), about which the author makes a lot of speculations. This is followed by a discussion of the election of 1936 and how FDR wasted his political capital on the court fight (12). This is followed by the author’s praise of the CIO and his discussion of the Later New Deal and its total ineffectiveness (13), as well as the last years of the Depression where Dr. New Deal ran out of nostrums and quack cures (14). After the author attempts to be a false prophet by comparing Reagan (negatively) to Hoover and claiming that Reagan’s presidency would lead to a return of the Great Depression, which did not end up happening (15), the book closes with notes and an index.

The Great Depression is a bad book, from someone whose credentials as a historian are pretty laughable, if this work is any indication of his general historical method. This book is filled with the author’s pronouncements on politics as if they were reflections of reality rather than the author’s own biased imagination, and the author views selective anecdotes taken from the letter of low-level partisan hacks among the general population as illustrative of the mind of the so-called “Forgotten Man,” rather than seeing them as the generally useless political texts that they are in their attempts to gain favor from and influence FDR in his political dealings. They speak only about the mind of the individuals who wrote, not the American population as a whole, although the author conflates the mind of leftist people who wrote to FDR seeking specific results from him with the “general will” of the public, as if that means anything, or deserves respect. The whole apparatus of this book is flawed, from the author’s inability to understand that his viewpoint is mistaken, and especially the way that he attempts to claim that all sources of virtue, from leftist virtue signaling (of which this book is full) to a mistaken interpretation of Christianity to support his views on “social justice,” which does not in any way respect or celebrate the first, seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth commandments in any meaningful way, to the way that the author seeks to cobble together the contemporary leftist coalition of identity politics as a means of supporting bad policies for destructive and partisan ends, namely the destruction of the United States and its replacement with a bankrupt and corrupt “Democratic Republic” ruled over by the likes of the author and his corrupt intellectual cronies. It would be best if the author and all others of his ilk found themselves in the political wilderness, bereft of any power or anyone who was forced to listen to their lies because of the cultural power they had attained.