Great Society
Great Society contains a deep analysis of the government policy that has shaped politics and society for over fifty years. One of greatest pieces of legislation ever enacted in American history, it has been an authoritative and well-reasoned reinterpretation of Johnson’s signature achievement and the period it was conceived. This book tackles topics such as racial differences, economic opportunity and outcomes, abuse of political power, and establishment corruption, with discussions on rural and urban poverty, and socialist and communists movements of the 1930s. Driven by Shlaes economic expertise and substantial historical knowledge, the author proves that, once again, policies and law with the best of intentions often have the opposite effect.
"Great Society is accurate history that reads like a novel, covering the high hopes and catastrophic missteps of our well-meaning leaders."
—Alan Greenspan
“This well-researched and smoothly written masterpiece sheds a badly needed lesson-laden light on one of the most important and turbulent times in American history. Shlaes has rendered a book for the ages.”
—Steve Forbes
"Shlaes’s account of America in the 1960s recalls her 2007 The Forgotten Man about America in the 1930s, and finds — guess what? — a complicated nation. The author writes with a free style, including information on lesser-known figures of the era, as well as an interesting assessment of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon."
—Washington Post
“A provocative, well-argued take on a turbulent era.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Gripping...the lesson for the future could not be clearer."
—John Taylor, Wall Street Journal
"Ms. Shlaes’s chronicle is not just a story of how good people’s good intentions went wrong. It is also a story of how the assumption that the near future will closely resemble the recent past can lead even the best-intentioned and most well-informed people to pursue policies that turn out to be mostly counterproductive and often destructive.”
—Wall Street Journal