The Forgotten Man is considered by many to be a benchmark history of the Great Depression in America. Amity Shlaes’ background as a distinguished economic historian at the Council of Foreign Relations and syndicated columnist for Bloomberg gives her insight that is often missing in other histories of the period. She writes in a style that is pleasing to read, and at times, almost poetic.
Gordon Wood has repeatedly said that, in spite of popular opinion, history does not repeat itself. In the strictest sense, that’s true. No two events are exactly alike. But if you spend any time reading good history books, it’s impossible to not recognize that the emotions, desires, and ambitions that motivate mankind have gone largely unchanged for millennia. The striking thing about The Forgotten Man is that, even though it was published over 18-years ago, the policies, decisions, economics, and social conditions it describes in the 1930s are mirror images of what’s happening today. Maybe Wood is right about history, but Shlaes work clearly shows that politics and human nature never change and that creates outcomes that are sadly predictable.
I finished this book on a weeknight at 1:30 AM. The last paragraph literally left a lump in my throat. I needed sleep but found myself spending an hour staring at the cover, re-reading Shlaes’ bio, and flipping through the dozens of dog-eared pages. It was an amazing read and I cannot recommend it enough.
Notable Quotes
The Forgotten Man at the Beginning of the Depression:
“About half a century before the Depression, a Yale philosopher named William Graham Sumner penned a lecture against the progressives of his day. [In defining The Forgotten Man] Sumner wrote, ‘As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what A, B, and C shall do for X’. But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, the man who is never thought of.”
“This book is the story of A, the progressives of the 1920s and ‘30s whose good intentions inspired the country. But it is even more the story of C, the American who was not thought of. He was the Depression-era man who was not part of any political constituency and therefore lived the negatives of the period. He was the man who paid for the big projects, who got make-work instead of real work. He was the man who waited for economic growth that did not come… He is the fellow that is trying to get along without public relief and has been attempting the same thing since the depression that cracked down on him.”
The Forgotten Man in 1940 at the End of the Depression as World War Two Began:
“The country now seemed to remember again what it always knew: that the adventurer was the force who pushed the country forward. It was the adventurer’s America too that the soldiers would shortly be defending. And no one wanted to serve more than the Forgotten Man.”
The Details
Title: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
Author: Amity Shlaes
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date: 2007
Pages: 468
