 | New Deal and States Little has been written about the New Deal's effect at the state level. How did the states act before the New Deal? Did the Roosevelt administration promote progressive policies on the state level? Did it destroy state initiative? Was it discriminatory? In what kinds of states did it seem to have the greatest impact, and why? What barriers were placed in the way of New Deal planning? Professor Patterson traces trends in state affairs and in American federalism between 1920 and 1940, focusing on the states in relation to the federal government. Though he pays attention to individual state variations, he searches for generalizations which explain the pattern instead of presenting a routine state-by-state survey. James T. Patterson is an American historian, and Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University. He wrote "Grand Expectations: the United States, 1945-1974," which received the 1997 Bancroft Prize in American history. (The Bancroft prize is one of the most prestigious honors a book of history can received and was established at Columbia University in 1948. It's considered to be on par with the Pulitzer Prize because an anonymous jury of peers judges it.) "Grand Expectations" is an interpretation of the explosive growth, high expectations and unusual optimism that Americans experienced after World War II that went into the 1960's. It follows the social, economic and cultural trends, and foreign policy issues, which became less optimistic after the assassinations, the Vietnam War and Watergate. (Bowker Author Biography) |
