| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jason Scott Smith. Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933–1956. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 283. $75.00.
For the past two decades there has been mounting interest among historians in the study of state policy making, bureaucracy, and infrastructure development. The Journal of Policy History has become a respected champion of such scholarship, and Alice O'Connor and Patrick Reagan have produced fine works in this genre. Of course, Samuel P. Hays might well wonder why it has taken so long for the profession to catch up to the scholarly approaches and research topics he began exploring sixty years ago. The answer may well be that policy history requires scholars to bring to life the drama behind frequently mundane events. There is also the problem of dealing with a documentary trail of bureaucratic backbiting so confusing as to defy ready understanding.	1
Such are the challenges that Jason Scott Smith has grappled with in writing a study of New Deal politics and public works. Smith's research is commendable and the points he addresses contribute enormously to our understanding of New Deal political economy.	2
As Smith notes in detail, public works spending soared during the Great Depression. With copious documentary evidence and statistics he demonstrates that public works projects were at the center, rather than the periphery, of New Deal political considerations and economic recovery policy. Smith contends that even if the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) failed to solve massive unemployment, such agencies represented a significant departure in the federal role in infrastructure improvement. Both the WPA and the PWA, driven by such strong-willed and calculating figures as Harry Hopkins and Harold Ickes, also sought to play a role in cementing a Democratic electoral realignment.	. . .

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