A Concise History of the New Deal

Jason Scott Smith is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches courses on the history of capitalism and liberalism. Smith is the author of the award-winning Building New Deal Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He is often quoted in the media, and his scholarly work has appeared in a number of journals, including the Journal of Social History, the Pacific Historical Review, Reviews in American History, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. From 2004 to 2006 he held a Mellon Fellowship in American Studies at Cornell University, where he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Government. In 2001–2 he was the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

'Jason Scott Smith's book could not be more timely. He has written what now must be regarded as the best one-volume history of the New Deal. His easy mastery of the vast historical literature and his sensitivity to political realities provide a compelling account of FDR's dramatic efforts to save capitalism and create a more humane society. Smith's clear-eyed assessment of what the New Deal did, and did not, achieve is a refreshing antidote to the simplistic debates of today's politics. A tour de force.' Tony Badger, Paul Mellon Professor of American History, University of Cambridge

• 1. A global depression; 2. Saving capitalism, 1933–4; 3. The New Deal at high tide, 1934–6; 4. Society and culture in the 1930s; 5. Opposition and backlash, 1937–9; 6. Legacies of the New Deal.