Promotional Information

Best argues that Roosevelt was himself the primary obstacle to American recovery from the Great Depression. 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.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Dramatis Personae New Faces and New Fears Rising Criticism Delaying Recovery The First Roosevelt Depression, 1934 The Supreme Court Rules An Air of Unreality Fueling a Boom The Election and Boom of 1936 Megalomania and Mindlessness The Road to the Crash The Second Roosevelt Depression, I, 1937 The Second Roosevelt Depression, II, 1938 The Second Roosevelt Depression, III, 1939 Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author

GARY DEAN BEST is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He is also the author of To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Europe, 1890-1914 (Greenwood Press, 1982) and The Politics of American Individualism: Herbert Hoover in Transition, 1918-1921 (Greenwood Press, 1975).