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January 02, 2008
Alan Lawson, PhD'66
A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
The book: Did the New Deal represent the true American way, or was it an aberration that would last only until the old order could reassert itself? This study tells the story of the New Deal, explains its origins and assesses its legacy. Alan Lawson explores how the circumstances of the Great Depression and the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt combined to bring about unprecedented economic and policy reform. Challenging conventional wisdom, he argues that the New Deal was not an improvised response to an unexpected crisis, but the realization of an opportunity to put into practice Roosevelt's long-developed progressive thought.
The author: Alan Lawson, professor emeritus of history and honors at Boston College, has been a professor of American intellectual history at the University of California, Smith College and Boston College. His writings have stressed the importance of the arts to public life and described the ways in which the public sector has responded to the arts.
Posted by tobiaslw at January 2, 2008 11:55 AM