Amity Shlaes Poradie kníh

Today, a battle rages in our country over socialism and economic redistribution versus purer capitalism. In the 1960s, Americans sought similar goals: ending poverty, improving middle-class living standards, and expanding access to healthcare and education. The debates then mirrored today’s discussions about socialism and capitalism, with a preference for public sector solutions under presidents like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. However, the idealistic targets remained elusive, and programs initiated by Johnson and Nixon led to a cycle of government dependence for millions. Ironically, the entitlement commitments from that era now hinder necessary reforms for the future. This work serves as a powerful companion to the author’s earlier history of the 1930s, revealing that Johnson and Nixon, often viewed as opposites, shared striking similarities. The failures in Vietnam, driven by technocratic planning, parallel domestic failures caused by the same elite mindset. Blending history and biography, the text portrays influential figures from this transformative period, including U.S. Presidents, labor leaders, and economists. It also sheds light on figures like Ronald Reagan and socialist Michael Harrington. Drawing on economic expertise and historical insight, the author challenges the traditional narrative, offering a critical examination of idealism’s consequences, with lessons pertinent to our current cont

Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man, delivers a brilliant and provocative reexamination of America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, and the decade of unparalleled growth that the nation enjoyed under his leadership. In this riveting biography, Shlaes traces Coolidge’s improbable rise from a tiny town in New England to a youth so unpopular he was shut out of college fraternities at Amherst College up through Massachusetts politics. After a divisive period of government excess and corruption, Coolidge restored national trust in Washington and achieved what few other peacetime presidents have: He left office with a federal budget smaller than the one he inherited. A man of calm discipline, he lived by example, renting half of a two-family house for his entire political career rather than compromise his political work by taking on debt. Renowned as a throwback, Coolidge was in fact strikingly modern—an advocate of women’s suffrage and a radio pioneer. At once a revision of man and economics, Coolidge gestures to the country we once were and reminds us of qualities we had forgotten and can use today.

In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.