Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
The Forgotten Depression - James Grant

The Forgotten Depression

By: James Grant

Paperback | 17 November 2015

At a Glance

Paperback


$36.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.19 with

 or 

Ships in 5 to 10 business days

James Grant’s story of America’s last governmentally untreated depression: A bible for conservative economists, this “carefully researched history…makes difficult economic concepts easy to understand, and it deftly mixes major events with interesting vignettes” (The Wall Street Journal).

In 1920-1921, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most twenty-first century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No “stimulus” was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late 1921. Yet by 1929, the economy spiraled downward as the Hoover administration adopted the policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place.

In The Forgotten Depression, James Grant “makes a strong case against federal intervention during economic downturns” (Pittsburgh Tribune Review), arguing that the well-intended White House-led campaign to prop up industrial wages helped turn a bad recession into America’s worst depression. He offers examples like this, and many others, as important strategies we can learn from the earlier depression and apply today and to the future. This is a powerful response to the prevailing notion of how to fight recession, and “Mr. Grant’s history lesson is one that all lawmakers could take to heart” (Washington Times).
Industry Reviews
"A riveting and instructive tale. . . . the depression of 1920-21 has not received the scrutiny it deserves. The instructive lesson of the story is that the federal government "met the downturn by seeming to ignore it--or by implementing policies that an average 21st century economist would judge disastrous"--and the hands-off approach actually worked. . . . Once read, The Forgotten Depression will be hard to forget."-- "Barrons"
"Mr. Grant is an excellent writer, and The Forgotten Depression is a carefully researched history of this dramatic episode. . . . Mr. Grant's chronicle makes difficult economic concepts easy to understand, and it deftly mixes major events with interesting vignettes. . . . People who believe in the inadequacy of the current macroeconomic orthodoxy will find him to be an articulate spokesman."-- "The Wall Street Journal"

More in Economic History

The Great Transformation : China's Road from Revolution to Reform - Odd Arne Westad
Abundance : How We Build a Better Future - Ezra Klein

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
The Secret History of Gold : Myth, Money, Politics and Power - Dominic Frisby
Material World : A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future - Ed Conway
Money: A Story of Humanity - David McWilliams

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Debt : The First 5000 Years - David Graeber

RRP $44.99

$35.75

21%
OFF
Autocracy, Inc : The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
Collapse : The Fall of the Soviet Union - Vladislav M. Zubok

RRP $30.95

$25.75

17%
OFF
Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty

RRP $43.95

$34.75

21%
OFF
The Road to Serfdom : Routledge Classics - F.A. Hayek

RRP $29.99

$26.75

11%
OFF
How Democracies Die : What History Reveals About Our Future - Daniel Ziblatt
The Land Trap : A New History of the World's Oldest Asset - Mike Bird