The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Politics and Society in Modern America)
(By Jefferson R. Cowie) Read EbookSize | 24 MB (24,083 KB) |
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Author | Jefferson R. Cowie |
During those exceptional decades, which Cowie situates in the long arc of American history, the government used its considerable resources on behalf of working Americans in ways that it had not before and has not since. The crises of the Depression and World War II forced realignments of American politics and class relations, but these changes were less a permanent triumph of the welfare state than the product of a temporary cessation of enduring tensions involving race, immigration, culture, class, and individualism. Against this backdrop, Cowie shows how any renewed American battle for collective economic rights needs to build on an understanding of how the New Deal was won--and how it ultimately succumbed to contrasting patterns ingrained in U.S. history. As positive as the era of Roosevelt was in creating a more equitable society, Cowie suggests that the New Deal may necessarily belong more to the past than the future of American politics.
Anyone who wants to come to terms with the politics of inequality in U.S. history will need to read "The Great Exception."”