Description
Book SynopsisEven as unemployment rates soared during the Great Depression, FDR's relief and social security programs faced attacks in Congress and the courts on the legitimacy of federal aid to the growing population of poor. This book recovers this crucial aspect of American history, tracing the roots of the modern American welfare state.
Trade Review"A marvelous, deeply researched history of the largely forgotten role of federal disaster relief in the historical development of the American welfare state. Michele Landis Dauber shows very creatively how the Great Depression came to be understood as a single, monolithic event - as a disaster - that justified new and expansive forms of relief. Political scientists and historians will have to contend with her central argument: that the New Deal was less the product of a 'constitutional revolution' than ordinary lawyering from long-settled precedents." (Michael Willrich, author of Pox: An American History)"
