242 THE BiG DROP
the day and led the country back to growth through activism,
government programs and massive spending. This narrative
has been the blueprint and justification for liberal govern-
ment intervention and spending programs ever since.
What Shlaes show is that this narrative is almost complete-
ly wrong. Her book is a kind of alternative history, but one
much closer to the truth of what happened in the 1930s. She
shows that there was a great deal of continuity between the
Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. Both were activists and
interventionists.
Both believed in public works and government spending.
Major depression-era projects such as the Hoover Dam were
begun in the Hoover administration; Roosevelt merely contin-
ued such hydroelectric and flood control projects on a larger
scale with his Tennessee Valley Authority and other projects.
Importantly, Roosevelt did not end the depression in the
1930s; he merely managed it with mixed results until the exi-
gencies of war production finally helped the U.S. escape it.
Indeed, the U.S. had a severe relapse in 1937–38, the famous
“recession within a depression,” that reversed some of the
gains from the period of Roosevelt’s first term.
Shlaes also shines a light on the dark side of government
policy in the Hoover-Roosevelt years. She exposes the admira-
tion that many at the time had for dictators such as Mussolini
and Stalin who seemed to be achieving economic growth
through top-down central planning.
She also describes the collectivist farming communities
and labor concentration camps launched by the U.S. govern-
ment in those years. The extent of socialist and communist
leanings among major Roosevelt administration figures is well
known and Shlaes covers that ground thoroughly.
The book is balanced in its approach. Shlaes is meticulous
in describing the growth that was achieved and the jobs that
were created by FDR’s programs. She is also glowing in her