American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work

American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work | Nick Taylor | Fascinating and timely

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American-Made: The...

	American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work Nick Taylor Bantam, 2008 - 640 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

If you?ve traveled the nation?s highways, flown into New York?s LaGuardia Airport, strolled San Antonio?s River Walk, or seen the Pacific Ocean from the Beach Chalet in San Francisco, you have experienced some part of the legacy of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)?one of the enduring cornerstones of Franklin D. Roosevelt?s New Deal.

When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, a staggering 13 million American workers were jobless and many millions more of their family members were equally in need. Desperation ruled the land.

What people wanted were jobs, not handouts: the pride of earning a paycheck; and in 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs program was created. This was the Works Progress Administration, and it would forever change the physical landscape and the social policies of the United States.

The WPA lasted for eight years, spent $11 billion, employed 8½ million men and women, and gave the country not only a renewed spirit but a fresh face. Under its colorful head, Harry Hopkins, the agency?s remarkable accomplishment was to combine the urgency of putting people back to work with its vision of physically rebuilding America. Its workers laid roads, erected dams, bridges, tunnels, and airports. They stocked rivers, made toys, sewed clothes, served millions of hot school lunches. When disasters struck, they were there by the thousands to rescue the stranded. And all across the country the WPA?s arts programs performed concerts, staged plays, painted murals, delighted children with circuses, created invaluable guidebooks. Even today, more than sixty years after the WPA ceased to exist, there is almost no area in America that does not bear some visible mark of its presence.

Politically controversial, the WPA was staffed by passionate believers and hated by conservatives; its critics called its projects make-work and wags said it stood for We Piddle Around. The contrary was true. We have only to look about us today to discover its lasting presence.

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American Made

This is an excellent book and a great addition to history. I knew very little about the Worker's Progress Association until I saw the author speak about his book on Book TV. I was ignorant of the great works that the WPA did and had always had a negative view of the WPA. Since I have read the book I have talked with several people whose parents actually worked for the WPA and heard wonderful stories of their work. One woman told me of her widowed mother with 5 children who sewed every day for the WPA. She said her mother was able to buy food and clothes for them because of this employment. This truly is an enlightening book and very well written. I enjoyed it immensely.

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Fascinating and timely

A very readable work on the WPA. A good look at the stories of the government officials behind the WPA and those employed by it. A positive account of how government can make a lasting difference to its citizens.

Great book!

Well-researched, well-written. Taylor has created a compelling account of the work programs that were created to lift American out of the Great Depression. Not only did they succeed at transforming the American economy but they changed the very face of America. Wonderful reading for history buffs and students. Definitely worth the price.

A herculian task done well...

History is what it is. When written, it can be entertaining, or the most pathetic bore imaginable. Nick Taylor has done an applaudable feat of telling the tale of the country's ascention from the depression in an entertaining and highly acceptable manner that reads far more like a novel than a historical review.

At better than 500 pages, American-Made begins after the prosperity of the 1920s and leads us to World War II by following the trails taken to put one-third of the American people to work.

For anyone having read Grapes of Wrath, American-Made recalls much of the same hardship and futility experienced by Steinbeck's Joad family, only on a much grander, but just as readable, scale. Why did Hoover think that the answer to the country's problems literally could be solved with a song, and where did the poor and hungry find apples to sell for a nickle are just two of the dozens of tales incorporated into this book.

I also particularly enjoyed his simple, untold tales of American ingenuity, and was surprised to discover how many WPA projects endure today. From building gravel roads, to constructing a podium for FDR, the author has done a superb job of capturing the era while keeping the reader's attention and interest.

Paraphrasing Howard O. Hunter, Commissioner of the WPA, .."the full accomplishments of the WPA will never by known. It has simply been too large in figures and volume of things done to get it all in one brief statement." Taylor tries, and does a commendable job of it.

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Lessons learned?

Engagingly written and well (if skimpily) illustrated. However, the chapters on the Writers' and Theatre Projects were regrettably brief and, therefore, seemed superficial, and the treatment of PWA accomplishments lacked the kind of substance found in "America Builds," published by the Government in 1939. Also, a table of contents expanded to list chapter titles would have been helpful. Nevertheless, an instructive and worthwhile read.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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