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Reading Lists by Topic

Reading Lists by Topic

We have prepared selective short lists by topic of books on the New Deal. Click on any topic to open the list. Titles with an asterisk are a good place to start. Lists can be downloaded individually or download all. (Longer topical bibliographies can be found here.)

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New Deal Overviews book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Alter, Jonathan	2007	The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope	Simon & Schuster	New York, NY
Badger, Anthony	2002	The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940	Ivan R. Dee	Chicago, IL
Bindas, Kenneth J.	2022	The New Deal and American Society, 1933-1941	Routledge	New York, NY
Chafe, William, Ed	2003	The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies	Columbia U. Press	New York, NY
Collins, Sheila and Gertrude Goldberg, Eds	2014	When Government Helped: Learning from the Successes and Failures of the New Deal	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Edsforth, Ronald	2000	The New Deal: America’s Response to the Great Depression	Blackwell Publishers	Edinburgh, UK
Fraser, Steve & Gary Gerstle	1989	The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980	Princeton U. Press	Princeton, NJ
Hiltzik, Michael	2011	The New Deal: A Modern History	Free Press	New York, NY
Leuchtenburg, William	1997	The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy	Columbia U. Press	New York, NY
*Rauchway, Eric	2021	Why the New Deal Matters	Yale U. Press	New Haven, CT
Schlesinger Arthur	1958	The Coming of the New Deal: 1933-1935 (Reprint 2003)	Mariner Books	Boston, MA
*Smith, Jason Scott	2014	A Concise History of the New Deal	Cambridge U. Press	New York, NY
Watkins, T.H.	1993	The Great Depression: America in the 1930s	Little Brown	Boston, MA

FDR and the New Dealers book list.

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The New Deal and Politics book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Brinkley, Alan	2009	Franklin Delano Roosevelt	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Cook, Blanche Weisen	2000	Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years: 1933-1938	Penguin Press	New York, NY
Clarke, Jeanne	1996	Roosevelt’s Warrior: Harold L. Ickes and the New Deal	Johns Hopkins U. Press	Baltimore, MD
DeMasi, Susan Rubenstein	2016	Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force of the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project	McFarland	Jefferson, NC
Downey, Kirstin	2009	The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience	Nan Talese	New York, NY
Freidel, Frank	1990	Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny	Little Brown	Boston, MA
Hopkins, June	1999	Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer	St. Martin’s Press	New York, NY
*Leuchtenburg, William	1963	Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-40	Harper Books	New York, NY
Long, Nancy Ann Zrinyi	2004	The Life and Legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune	Florida Hist. Soc. Press	Cocoa, FL
Perkins, Frances	1946	The Roosevelt I Knew (Reprint Edition 2011)	Penguin Classics	New York, NY
Rozell, Mark	1997	FDR and the Modern Presidency: Leadership and Legacy	Praeger	Westport, CT
Scroop, Daniel	2006	Mr. Democrat: Jim Farley, the New Deal, and the Making of Modern American Politics	U. Michigan Press	Ann Arbor, MI
Ware, Susan	1981	Beyond Suffrage: Women and the New Deal	Harvard U. Press	Cambridge, MA

The New Deal and the Economy book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Amenta, Edwin	2006	When Movements Matter: The Townsend Plan and the Rise of Social Security	Princeton U. Press	Princeton, NJ
Benson, Thomas	2006	American Rhetoric in the New Deal Era, 1932-1945	Michigan State U.	E. Lansing, MI
Domhoff, William and Michael Webber	2011	Class and Power In The New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition	Stanford U. Press	Stanford, CA
Katznelson, Ira	2013	Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time	Liveright Publishing	New York, NY
*Lawson, Alan	2006	A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis	Johns Hopkins U. Press	Baltimore, MD
Ortiz, Stephen	2010	Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era	New York U. Press	New York, NY
Rauchway, Eric	2018	Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, And The First Clash Over The New Deal	Basic Books	New York, NY
Schwarz, Jordan	1993	The New Dealers: Power Politics in the Age of Roosevelt	Alfred A. Knopf	New York, NY
Storrs, Landon	2013	The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left	Princeton U. Press	Princeton, NJ
Sunstein, Cass	2004	The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever	Basic Books	New York, NY
Wall, Wendy	2008	Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Williams, Mason	2013	City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York	Norton	New York, NY

The New Deal and Race book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Badger, Anthony	2002	The New Deal: The Depression Year, 1933-1940	Ivan R. Dee	Chicago, IL
Barber, William	1996	Designs Within Disorder: Franklin D Roosevelt, the Economists, and the Shaping of American Economic Policy, 1933-1945	Cambridge U. Press	New York, NY
Bordo, Michael, Claudia Goldin and Eugene White, Eds.	1998	The Defining Moment: The Great Depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
Cohen, Lizabeth	2003	A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption In Postwar America	Alfred A. Knopf	New York, NY
Field, Alexander	2011	A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth	Yale U. Press	New Haven, CT
Himmelberg, Robert	201	The Great Depression and the New Deal	Greenwood Press	Westport, CT
McElvaine, Robert	1993	The Great Depression in America, 1929-1942	Penguin Press	New York, NY
*Rauchway, Eric	2008	The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Romanesco, Albert	1983	The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt's New Deal	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Thorndike, Joseph	2013	Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR	Urban Institute Press	Washington, DC

The New Deal and Conservation book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Brown, Nikki	2006	Private Politics and Public Voices: Black Women’s Activism from World War I to the New Deal	Indiana U. Press	Bloomington, IN
Breitman, R. and A. Lichtman	2003	FDR and the Jews	Harvard U. Press	Cambridge, MA
Grant, Nancy	1990	TVA and Black Americans: Planning for the Status Quo	Temple U. Press	Philadelphia, PA
Johnson, Kimberly	2010	Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and the State Before Brown	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Kirby, John	1982	Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race	U. of Tennessee	Knoxville, TN
Lukens, Patrick	2012	A Quiet Victory for Latino Rights: FDR & Controversy Over "Whiteness"	U. of Arizona Press	Tucson, AZ
*Reed, Touré	2020	Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism	Verso Press	London, UK
Rung, Margaret	2002	Servants Of The State: Managing Diversity and Democracy In The Federal Workforce, 1933-1953	U. of Georgia Press	Athens, GA
*Sitkoff, Harvard	2009	A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue in The Depression Decade	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Sklaroff, Lauren Rebecca	2014	Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era	U. of North Carolina Press	Chapel Hill, NC
Taylor, Graham	1980	The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism: Administration of the Indian Reorganization Act, 1934-1945	U. of Nebraska Press	Lincoln, NE
Weiss, Nancy	1983	Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR	Princeton U. Press	Princeton, NJ
Watts, Jill	2020	The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt	Grove Press	New York, NY

New Deal Public Works and Relief Work book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Alexander, Benjamin	2018	The New Deal's Forest Army: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Worked	Johns Hopkins U. Press	Baltimore, MD
Brinkley, Douglas	2016	Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America	Harper Books	New York, NY
Cohen, Stan	1980	The Tree Army: A Pictorial History of the Civilian Conservation Corps	Pictorial History Publishing Company	Missoula, MT
Davis, Ren and Helen	2011	Our Mark on This Land: A Guide to the Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps in America’s Parks	McDonald & Woodward	Granville, OH
Henderson, Henry and David Woolner. Eds	2005	FDR and the Environment	Palgrave Macmillan	New York, NY
Lacy, Leslie	1976	The Soil Soldiers: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Great Depression	Chilton Book Co.	Radnor, PA
*Maher, Neil	2007	Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Page, John	1985	The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service	National Park Service	Washington, DC
Phillips, Sarah	2007	This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal	Cambridge U. Press	New York, NY
Simms, D. Harper	1970	The Soil Conservation Service	Praeger	New York, NY
White, Richard	1995	The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River	Hill and Wang	New York, NY

The New Deal, Agriculture & Rural Aid book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Alexander, Benjamin	2018	New Deal's Forest Army: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Worked	Johns Hopkins U. Press	Baltimore, MD
Alsberg, Henry	1934	America Fights the Depression: A Photographic Record of the Civil Works Administration	Coward-McCann	New York, NY
Attewell, Steven	2018	People Must Live by Work: Direct Job Creation in America from FDR to Reagan	U. of Pennsylvania Press	Philadelphia, PA
Billington, David and Donald Jackson	2006	Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics	U. Oklahoma Press	Norman, OK
Cole, Olen Jr.	1999	The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps	U. Press of Florida	Gainesville, FL
Culvahouse, Tim, Ed.	2007	The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion	Princeton Architectural Press	New York, NY
Hapke, Laura	2008	Labor’s Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA	Cambridge Scholars	Newcastle, UK
Leighninger, Robert	2007	Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal	U. of South Carolina	Columbia, SC
Lowitt, Richard	1984	The New Deal and the West	Indiana U. Press	Bloomington, IN
Salmond, John	1967	The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942: A New Deal Case Study	Duke U. Press	Durham, NC
Smith, Jason Scott	2006	Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956	Cambridge U. Press	New York, NY
*Taylor, Nick	2009	American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, When FDR Put the Nation to Work	Bantam Books	New York, NY

The New Deal and Labor book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
*Appelt, Kathi	2019	Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky	Purple Home Press	Cynthiana, KY
Conkin, Paul	2008	A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture Since 1929	U. of Kentucky Press	Lexington, KY
Egan, Timothy	2006	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl	Mariner Books	New York, NY
Fite, Gilbert	1984	Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980	U. of Kentucky Press	Lexington, KY
Gilbert, Jess Carr	2015	Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal	Yale U. Press	New Haven, CT
Lester, Connie	2002	Revolution in the Land: Southern Agriculture in the 20th Century	Mississippi State U.	Jackson, MS
Newkirk, Vann	2019	The great land robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms	The Atlantic Magazine 8/26/2019	New York, NY
Roberts, Charles	2015	The Farm Security Administration and Rural Rehabilitation in the South	U. of Tennessee	Knoxville, TN
Saloutos, Theodore	1982	The American Farmer and the New Deal	Iowa State U. Press	Ames, IA
Shields, Marquis	1952	The Farmer Takes A Hand: The Electric Power Revolution in Rural America	Doubleday	Garden City, NY

The New Deal and the Arts book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Bernstein, Irving	1985	A Caring Society: The New Deal, the Worker and the Great Depression	Houghton Mifflin	Boston, MA
Ayers, Oliver	2019	Laboured Protest: Black Civil rights in New York City and Detroit during the New Deal and Second World War	Routledge	New York, NY
Cohen, Lizabeth	1990	Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers In Chicago, 1919-1939	Cambridge U. Press	New York, NY
Gellman, Erik	2011	The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America	U. of Illinois Press	Urbana, IL
Greenhouse, Steven	2008	The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker	Alfred A. Knopf	New York, NY
Horowitz, Roger	1977	"Negro and White, United and Fight!" A Social History of Industrial Unionism, 1930-1990	U. of Illinois Press	Urbana, IL
Levine, Rhonda	1988	Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital and the State	U. of Kansas Press	Lawrence, KS
*Lichtenstein, Nelson	2002	The State of the Union: A Century of American Labor	Princeton U. Press	Princeton, NJ
Paulsen, George	1996	A Living Wage for the Forgotten Man: The Quest for Fair Labor Standards, 1933-1941	Susquehanna U. Press	Selinsgrove, PA
Rosensweig, Roy and Nelson Lichtenstein	2008	Who Built America: Working People and the Nation's History	Bedford/St. Martin's	Boston, MA

The New Deal and Housing book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Adams, Katherine and Michael Keene	2016	Women, Art and the New Deal	McFarland	Jefferson, NC
*Borchert, Scott	2021	Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America	Farrar, Straus & Giroux	New York, NY
Dijkstra, Bram	2003	American Expressionism: Art and Social Change 1920-1950	Harry Abrams	New York, NY
Fender, Stephen	2012	Nature, Class, and New Deal Literature: The Country Poor in the Great Depression	Routledge	New York, NY
Griswold, Wendy	2016	American Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
*Kennedy, Roger	2009	When Art Worked: The New Deal Art and Democracy	Rizzoli	New York, NY
Kroiz, Lauren	2018	Cultivating Citizens: The Regional Work of Art in the New Deal Era	U. of California Press	Berkeley, CA
Mangione, Jerre	1972	The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers’ Project, 1935-1943	Little Brown	Boston, MA
McLerran, Jennifer	2009	A New Deal for Native Art: Indian Arts and Federal Policy, 1933-1943	U. of Arizona Press	Tucson, AZ
Musher, Sharon Ann	2015	Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
Quinn, Susan	2008	Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times	Walker and Co.	New York, NY
Saal, Ilka	2007	New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater	Palgrave Macmillan	New York, NY
Taylor, David	2009	The Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America	Wiley Books	San Francisco, CA

The New Deal and the South book list.

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Carriker, Robert	2010	Urban Farming in the West: A New Deal Experiment in Subsistence Homesteads	U. of Arizona Press	Tucson, AZ
Fishback, Price, Jonathan Rose and Kenneth Snowden	2013	Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
Freund, David	2007	Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
*Gelfand, Mark	1975	A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America 1933-1975	Oxford U. Press	New York, NY
Goetz, Edward	2013	New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy	Cornell U. Press	Ithaca, NY
Gibbons, Andrea	2018	City of Segregation: 100 Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles	Verso Press	London, UK
Kimble, Lionel, Jr.	2015	A New Deal for Bronzeville: Housing, Employment and Civil Rights in Black Chicago, 1935-1955	South Illinois U. Press	Carbondale, IL
Massey, Douglas and Nancy Denton	1993	American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass	Harvard U. Press	Cambridge, MA
*Radford, Gail	1996	Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era	U. of Chicago Press	Chicago, IL
Szylvian, Kristin M.	2015	The Mutual Housing Experience: New Deal Communities for the Urban Middle Class	Temple U. Press	Philadelphia, PA
Wright, Gwendolyn	1981	Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America	MIT Press	Cambridge, MA

Author	Pub Date	Title	Publisher	Pub City
Biles, Roger	1994	The South and the New Deal	U. of Kentucky Press	Lexington, KY
Cobb, James and Michael Namorato, Eds	1984	The New Deal and the South	U. of Mississippi	Jackson, MS
Gilmore, Glenda	2008	Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950	W.W. Norton	New York, NY
Gregory, James	2005	The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of White and Black Southerners Transformed America	U. of North Carolina Press	Chapel Hill, NC
Jordan, Milton	2019	Conflict and Cooperation: Reflections on the New Deal in Texas	South Austin U. Press	Nacogdoches, TX
Lowndes, Joseph	2008	From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism	Yale U. Press	New Haven, CT
Metz, Paul	1978	New Deal Policy and Southern Rural Poverty	Louisiana State U.	Baton Rouge, LA
*Reed, Adolph Jr.	2022	The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives	Jacobin Press	New York, NY
Schulman, Bruce	1994	From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1939-1980	Duke U. Press	Durham, NC
Smith, Douglas	1988	The New Deal in the Urban South	Louisiana State U.	Baton Rouge, LA
*Wright, Gavin	1986	Old South, New South: Revolution in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War	Basic Books	New York, NY

Living New Deal. Still Working.