Departments

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New Deal

  • SOURCE: Contingent
    12/13/2021

    The Government Pen

    by Nick Delehanty

    "The Skilcraft pen is indeed more than a pen. It’s the physical embodiment of New Deal social policies; it’s the product of disabled people’s labor, labor which has long been a site of contestation."

  • SOURCE: NPR
    11/29/2021

    Lizabeth Cohen: Why Americans Buy So Much Stuff

    As holiday shopping overlaps with historic supply chain disruptions, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lizabeth Cohen on the economy's reliance on spending and the culture of consumerism in the U.S.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    11/8/2021

    TNR Editor: Actually, Biden Was Elected to Be an FDR

    If Democratic moderates want their president and their party to succeed, they need to grapple with the political decisions that have destroyed public investment and transferred the nation's wealth upward to the rich, and think of the present as a crisis comparable to the Great Depression. 

  • SOURCE: New York Magazine
    10/10/2021

    Has Biden's FDR Dream Hit the Rocks?

    Joe Biden must have expected unified Republican opposition and betrayal by Democratic moderates, but probably not so quickly. 

  • 9/26/2021

    A House Still Divided (Part 1)

    by Walter G. Moss

    The core of our polarization is a disagreement about what kind of country we will be – one dominated by Christian white men or one, in Frederick Douglass's words, "of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds." 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    7/26/2021

    What is Left of the New Deal?

    by Michael Kazin

    Eric Rauchway's book on the New Deal stresses that FDR believed democracy could survive only if people accepted, and government supported, their mutual dependence on one another. Preserving the New Deal political order means recognizing and celebrating its tangible achievements. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    7/6/2021

    A New Deal for Writers in America

    by Scott Borchert

    "The best reason to support a new F.W.P. is also the most obvious. Like its predecessor, the project would be an economic rescue plan for writers, broadly defined: workers who have been grappling with a slowly unfolding crisis in their industry for at least a decade."

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    6/15/2021

    When the Government Supported Writers

    by Max Holleran

    "With its reminder that creative labor was once seen—like a strategic reserve of fuel, weapons, or medical supplies—as worthy of federal protection, Republic of Detours mobilizes New Deal history to help us imagine what our society would be like if federal tax dollars supported a reserve army of muralists, poets, and oral historians."

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    5/24/2021

    Are We Entering a New Political Era?

    A group of younger progressive activists is seeking to push the Democratic Party to see a new political alignment where active government and public programs are no longer considered impossible. Some members of the group of historians and scholars who met with President Biden in March also relayed that message.

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    5/17/2021

    Joe Biden Wants to Be Like Roosevelt. But Can He Get the Votes?

    Jill Lepore and Jelani Cobb join New Yorker Editor David Remnick's podcast to discuss the prospects for an ambitious program of spending and public works. As Lepore says, “You can’t put F.D.R. in Dr. Who’s phone booth and bring him to 2021."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    5/3/2021

    A New Deal, This Time for Everyone

    The New Deal emphasized that American democracy must be healthy for its economy to enjoy legitimacy, and vice versa. It's time, says NYT editor Binyamin Appelbaum, to extend that commitment to the economic participation of women. 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    5/1/2021

    FDR’s Second 100 Days Were Cooler Than His First 100 Days

    by Jordan Weissmann

    The first 100 days of the New Deal could be described as disaster response. The second 100 days, according to historians William Leuchtenberg, Erich Rauchway and David Kennedy, were when the administration took steps that transformed labor relations and birthed a modern social welfare state.