Advance praise: 'Barber has written a fascinating sequel to his From New Era to New Deal. Together, these books give us a superb - indeed, our very best - history of the role economists played in shaping federal policy between 1921 and 1945. Because he has done his homework in the archives, Barber is able to document the clash of competing ideas within the federal government, to demonstrate the linkages between ideas and policy, and to show us how the experiences of New Deal economists shaped the development of economic knowledge. In the process of explaining how Franklin Roosevelt organized the work of the economists, Barber favors us with a novel interpretation of Roosevelt - as 'an uncompromising champion of consumer sovereignty'.' W. Elliot Brownlee, University of California, Santa Barbara Advance praise: 'A society that grants enormous authority to economists in government had better pay attention to what and how they think. In this fine study, one of our leading historians of economic thought, William Barber, cuts to the core of the connection between economic knowledge and public policy during the New Deal. Barber shows how the dream of a full-fledged 'Fisc' to match the 'Fed' was blighted, and his emphasis on 'economic learning' - theoretical breakthroughs achieved experimentally, through the deliberative processes of governance - adds an important dimension to the typical new institutionalist preoccupation with structural constraints such as federalism. Barber;s shrewd observations about the not-so-positive implications for today of the low-savings, high-consumption lessons the Keynesians taught are thought-provoking. In all, this is an important book for all those interested in the critical debates that shaped the course of modern liberalism.' Mary O. Furner, University of California, Santa Barbara
