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American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Taylor
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $13.00
You Save: $14.00 (52%)
New (31) Used (11) Collectible (1) from $10.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 76437
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 640
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0553802356
Dewey Decimal Number: 331.1377097309043
EAN: 9780553802351
ASIN: 0553802356
Publication Date: February 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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 8 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
A herculian task done well... September 1, 2008
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.
 Lessons learned? August 17, 2008
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.
 American Made July 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Good History July 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There are, doubtless, more than a few scholarly histories of various aspects of the New Deal which presuppose a good amount of knowledge on the part of the reader. And there are also plenty of general overviews of FDR and the Great Depression. So, it's nice to have a history of the WPA that is somewhere halfway between these two kinds of studies.
Taylor's book is a combination of "great man" history (FDR and Harry Hopkins, mostly) and oral history chapters, detailing the experiences of persons representative of the millions of WPA workers. The author's sympathy with all involved is evident, but he isn't blinded to some of their faults. For example, Franklin Roosevelt is depicted as being oblivious to the political consequences of his 1937 "court-packing" scheme, and it is shown that the WPA arts programs were pretty much left to fend for themselves when Martin Dies' House Committee on Un-American Activities went looking for a whipping boy.
A very convenient glossary at the end of the book gives a list of the New Deal's "alphabet soup" agencies.
 Maudlin Mush May 6, 2008
2 out of 19 found this review helpful
I have long been fascinated by FDR and his contribution to modern America, so with great anticipation I reserved "American Made" at my local library. I was eager to read about how much the WPA had done to rescue the nation from the Great Depression. What a disappointment. I couldn't get through the first chapter before I was overwhelmed by saccharine sap. A brief quotation (from page 9) suffices:
"When it was jobs, not unemployment, that vanished, people found it impossible to believe at first. They never thought it could happen to them. Office workers who got pink slips went home and circled newspaper want ads at the kitchen table, then went out the next morning with the paper tucked under their arms, full of expectation, only to return at night disappointed....Bulletin boards bristled with "No Help Wanted " signs. Barkers bellowed "No jobs today, men" over bullhorns at the factory gates. Each day hope flaked away like layers of old paint....[Job seekers] haunted the counters of cheap coffee shops and stood in sheltered doorways. Anything was better than returning home and admitting defeat to a wife whose eager hope shone on her face as she opened the door--and to children who sensed the desperation in their parents' whispered conversations."
Hope flaked away like layers of old paint? Good grief. Spare me. If no one was hiring, and there were no jobs to be had, then what "newspaper want ads" were these job seekers circling with such hope? And if there were all these "newspaper want ads" then why were they all told "No jobs today" through bullhorns when they answered them? Did these men's wives really wait at their homes' front doors at the end of the day with such "eager hope" that their faces radiated? Please. And "anything was better than returning home" to face these soon to be dispirited women? Anything? Starvation, disease, homelessness? All better than a disappointed wife? And then they only whispered about it lest their children sense desperation? I doubt it.
I stopped reading after this page and promptly returned this overpraised book to the library. I hadn't the patience for another 500+ pages of this mush. I am thankful that I checked it out of the library and didn't waste my money. Do yourself a favor and go a step further. Leave it on the shelf.
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