The New Deal: Looking Back, Moving Forward

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt launched a New Deal that provided Americans with jobs, social services, labor protections and public works, among other benefits. In the decades since, advocates have created organizations, such as the National New Deal Preservation Association (NNDPA) and Living New Deal, to preserve and promote the values, ideas and structures associated with this reform movement. The book is dedicated to Kathryn Flynn, founding and long-term executive director of the NNDPA, who began this recognition and preservation of New Deal treasures in New Mexico and then across the nation. By chronicling NNDPA's efforts, exploring New Deal personalities, and examining New Deal programs, NNDPA members and guest authors illustrate the power of the New Deal to transform the social contract between citizens and their government, then and now. Essays focus on New Dealers such as Frances Perkins, Frank C. Walker, Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace; the operation of the New Deal in communities ranging from the Pikes Peak region in Colorado to Chicago to Dyess, Arkansas; and the physical and artistic legacy of programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works Administration (PWA), revealing the depth and breadth of the New Deal's ongoing influence on American life. Illustrated with vivid pictures of New Deal art, infrastructure, communities, and New Dealers past and present, The New Deal: Looking Back, Moving Forward uncovers, preserves and shares the legacy of this remarkable effort by the government to invest in the American people.