The New Deal: A Global History

As anyone who has ever taught the U.S. survey knows, the New Deal is wedged awkwardly between the Great Depression and World War II. On the one side, it is preceded by a global economic crisis that highlights the growing financial and trade interdependencies of nations, and on the other, it led into a global war that lastingly altered the role of the United States in the world. Yet, the intervening time is a period of utterly domestic economic policy reform. Historians have been able to bridge this gap in their writings and teachings, but only sporadically rather than systematically. Patel’s The New Deal: A Global History, which deals with this notoriously introspective period, deftly combines 1930s foreign affairs with a comparison of domestic policies in the United States, in other industrial nations, and in Latin America, intertwining political, economic, and cultural themes into a narrative in which the...