"Americans just now need what Amity Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish. She demonstrates that it did not bring about economic recovery, but it did invent modern American politics-the systematic and unending creation of interest groups dependent on government benefits. And she recognizes heroes-Wendell Willkie, for one-who, thanks to her, are unsung no more."
-George F. Will

* * * *

"There are many sides to the 1930's story, and this is the one that has largely been lost to history. And now it's been refound. Just listen to these stories of FDR and his foes, of Father Divine and of Bill W and the whole colorful and extraordinary cast that made up America in the great Depression. An epic and wholly original retelling of a dramatic and crucial era."
-Peggy Noonan, Author

"Amity Shlaes, who has established herself as a leading historian of twentieth-century finance, shows how inept government intervention turned a necessary market correction into an economic catastrophe and prolonged it into a decade of misery. Readers have waited eagerly for this book for decades. Amity Shlaes has produced it."
-Paul Johnson

"I could not put it down Miss Shlaes's timely chronicle of a fascinating era reads like a novel and brings a new perspective on political villains and heroes-few of whom turn out to be as good or bad as history would have us believe."

"With cool analysis enlivened by vivid vignettes in a compelling narrative, Amity Shlaes retrieves the epithet stolen and turned on its head by Franklin Roosevelt. The Forgotten Man is as central to political argument today as he was in the Great Depression. How much, in the name of many, may the group impinge on the individual? Miss Shlaes challenges much of the received wisdom and does it with brio and scholarship. Amity Shlaes takes no prisoners."
-Harold Evans

"Though it moves with the speed and fascination of a work by Frederick Lewis Allen, The Forgotten Manoffers an understanding of the era's politics and economics that may be unprecedented in its clarity. Seldom has such a substantive work been such a delight to read. Were John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman to spend a century or two reconciling their positions so as to arrive at a clear view of the Great Depression, this would be it."
-Mark Helprin