Cartoon, above: 1939 Chicago Tribune.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 1, Block A:  American Phoenix: The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster into Destiny by Sarah S. Kilborne (1 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 1, Block B: American Phoenix: The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster into Destiny by Sarah S. Kilborne (2 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 1, Block C: American Phoenix: The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster into Destiny by Sarah S. Kilborne (3 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 1, Block D: American Phoenix: The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster into Destiny by Sarah S. Kilborne (4 of 4)

Hour Two

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 2, Block A: All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s by Robert O. Self (1 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 2, Block B: All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s by Robert O. Self (2 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 2, Block C: All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s by Robert O. Self (3 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 2, Block D: All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s by Robert O. Self (4 of 4)

Hour Three

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 3, Block A: The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball (1 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 3, Block B: The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball (2 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 3, Block C: The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball (3 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 3, Block D: The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 4, Block A: The New Deal: A Modern History by Michael Hiltzik (1 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 4, Block B: The New Deal: A Modern History by Michael Hiltzik (2 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 4, Block C: The New Deal: A Modern History by Michael Hiltzik (3 of 4)

Monday  3 February 2014  / Hour 4, Block D: The New Deal: A Modern History by Michael Hiltzik (4 of 4)

..  ..  ..

An Economy in Trouble  Notwithstanding the billions of dollars spent, the economy did not get back to its 1929 level in FDR's first two terms.  By AMITY SHLAES September 13, 2011

Can you wage war against an economic downturn by attacking it like a military opponent? If so, can you win such a war? In "The New Deal," a blow-by-blow account of Roosevelt's campaign against the Great Depression, Michael Hiltzik implicitly answers both questions with a "yes." Mr. Hiltzik seems to be aiming  . . .  to explain how an able commander harnessed an improbably talented and obstreperous crew of advisers and steered them in an unprecedented direction, changing the character of America and rescuing it from crisis along the way.

Mr. Hiltzik begins by depicting the scale of the foe Roosevelt took on. In 1933, the year FDR became president, unemployment ranged around 25%, nearly triple today's level. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped to a tenth of its pre-Crash level. Nearly half of all farmers were delinquent in debt payments and risked losing their farms. Industrial production was down by nearly half.

The members of the Brains Trust seemed just the right team to lead the war. Commanding the monetary front was Marriner Eccles, a banker who refused to take the job of Federal Reserve chairman unless Roosevelt forced through Congress a rewrite of monetary laws to Eccles's specifications, moving the Fed's power base from New York to Washington. Matching Eccles in force of character was Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. His Public Works Administration was the first federal agency to spend billions, not millions, of dollars on a single domestic program. Ickes produced thousands of soundly engineered, respectable buildings with an admirably small quotient of graft.

Mr. Hiltzik captures especially well the advance of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a U.S. cabinet. She routed Hoover-appointed officials from the Labor Department and created the metrics that are still used to gauge unemployment. We also get to know the Rahm Emanuel of the Roosevelt administration, agriculture expert Rex Tugwell, whose frank utterances—laying out, for example, his vision for a planned economy in which industry "would logically be required to disappear"—provoked ferocious coverage from the Fox News of the day, the Hearst newspapers. One of the most prominent Brains Trusters was Harry Hopkins, who headed the Works Progress Administration, a vast agency devoted to creating temporary work projects and supplying jobs while recovery stayed away.

Roosevelt, for his part, made a formidable chief for this crew, sustaining and tolerating his dueling lieutenants with good humor—Ickes and Hopkins in particular squabbled continuously—while never losing sight of his ultimate goal: economic recovery.

Mr. Hiltzik presents the New Deal as an adventure made all the more thrilling by the uncertainty of its outcome—"a work in progress from its beginning to end"—and one that sustained democracy by keeping America from social and economic collapse. He believes that the good intentions of the New Dealers offset any damage done by the improvisational aspect of the programs: "The remedies could not wait for a final diagnosis," as he puts it. Roosevelt's troops included many true believers in the cause who brooked no criticism from doubters. Prickly Harry Hopkins, said by Mr. Hiltzik to be "the least cynical or defeatist member of the FDR's inner circle," countered attacks on his jobs program by saying that "dumb people criticize something they do not understand."

Notwithstanding the billions of dollars spent and the thousands of regulations enacted, the economy did not get back to its 1929 level in Roosevelt's first two terms. The Dow Jones Industrial Average likewise did not return to its pre-Crash level. Ten years into the Depression, total hours worked by the American labor force were a full 20% below the 1929 level. When it came to job creation overall, the New Dealers lost the battle: The unemployment data gathered so meticulously by Perkins and those who followed her averaged well into the double digits for Roosevelt's first decade. Even when temporary make-work jobs are counted, New Deal unemployment only occasionally moved into the single digits before World War II.

Mr. Hiltzik scarcely addresses this failure. He even more or less denies it by providing snapshots of year-over-year growth that seem impressive until you recall the low base from which they start. He also seems to mock efforts to understand why the New Deal failed. The scholar Robert Higgs has shown that Roosevelt's aggressive antibusiness policies caused companies to hunker down rather than start hiring, but when Mr. Hiltzik discusses business confidence he adds scoffing quotation marks around the phrase, as if business confidence is of little importance in economic matters.

The author also neglects the Wagner Act of 1935, which gave unprecedented clout to labor, inaugurating the era of the sit-down strike and the closed shop. The act drove up labor costs, spooking employers and discouraging them from hiring. This effect "The New Deal" obliviously marches past, banner waving. Mr. Hiltzik's chronicle would have been more effective if cast in a less triumphal mode, acknowledging the many ways in which the New Deal failed the economy it was trying to save.

Ms. Shlaes is the author of  The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.