In "The Forgotten Man," Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.

Calvin Coolidge never rated high in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s--triumphant years in which the nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus--and the little-known president behind them. Perhaps more than any other president, Coolidge understood that doing less could yield more, reducing the federal budget even as the economy grew, wages rose, taxes fell, and unemployment dropped.

In this illuminating, magisterial biography, Amity Shlaes captures the remarkable story of Calvin Coolidge and the decade of extraordinary prosperity that grew from his leadership.

It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. In "The Forgotten Man," Amity Shlaes offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation.

Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great--in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another. "The Forgotten Man," offers a new look at one of the most important periods in our history, allowing us to understand the strength of American character today.