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FDR’s Folly

9/23/2003

Jim Powell’s title ought to serve as ample warning that Roosevelt fans will not like his book. It is arranged in such a way as to address a series of questions—for example, “Why Did FDR Triple Taxes During the Great Depression?” and “Why Did New Dealers Make Everything Cost More in the Depression?” From beginning to end, he makes it clear the traditional historical accounts of the New Deal have given the thirty-second president far too much credit, and seeks to prove it by drawing on the work of prominent economists, who in the past thirty years or so have been considerably less enthusiastic than historians about the New Deal’s accomplishments.

Wilson's War

3/25/2005

"Jim Powell’s recent return to polemical history, Wilson’s War, pledges to demonstrate 'how Woodrow Wilson’s great blunder led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II.' ... Wilson’s War can be read as a bold new thesis, a revisiting of a more conventional thesis, or, arguably, as a two pronged approach – permitting bold-thesis polemics backed by conventional-thesis historical analysis."