We Can't Go Home Again--Rethinking the New Deal and Its Legacy

I've been working on a short book with Nick Salvatore called The Long Exception: An Interpretation of the New Deal in American History for Princeton University Press that grew out of some lectures and an article we wrote for the journal International Labor and Working Class History (and a small firestorm of responses). For a scholarly project, it's already whipped up a surprising amount of interest in places like The Nation and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. People immediately, almost viscerally, feel like they have to figure out where they stand on our argument. There is, I admit, a lot at stake.

I boiled our thinking down to its very essence--just a couple thousand words--for New Labor Forum's "On the Contrary" section. You can read this readily-digestible version of our argument here: Why We Can't Go Home Again: Why the New Deal Won't be Renewed.