The New Deal and Beyond

Reviews / Votes

A fine collection of essays examining the intersection of federal policies with the vast transformations that swept the South from the New Deal to the Great Society. The contributors describe, at times in compelling ways, the confrontation of southern poor people with the agents of modernity. -- Nan Elizabeth Woodruff * author of <i>American Congo</i> * Scholars of social policy have examined national government policy in depth, but we also need to remember that a policy can be no better than its actual implementation at the local level. The New Deal and Beyond provides exactly that kind of unromantic, realistic appraisal of how social welfare programs made a difference-or did not make a difference. -- Linda Gordon * author of <i>Heroes of Their Own Lives</i> * Affirms regional distinctiveness while connecting the development of social welfare institutions in the South to the growth of the federal welfare state . . . The fascinating essays in this volume underscore how landmark social welfare programs crafted in Democratic congresses, in which conservative southerners still wielded considerable power, initiated meaningful change but also allowed the survival of regional differences. -- <i>Journal of American History</i> Overall, the essays succeed in raising significant questions about southern distinctiveness and, moreover, the limits and occasionally unintended goods of social welfare policy. -- <i>H-Net Review</i> Anyone interested in the history of modern social welfare policy in the South should read The New Deal and Beyond as it offers provocative analyses of how race, gender, class, and region influence relationships between the citizenry and the state. -- Brooke Speer Orr * George Washington University * [A] fine collection . . . Green's elegantly written introduction provides a concise, thorough overview of the state of research on southern social welfare since 1930. . . . A better understanding of social welfare efforts from the past can inform today's policy-making. This important work should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex workings of social welfare programs in any age. -- <i>South Carolina Historical Magazine</i> A valuable collection that succeeds in highlighting possible directions for further research . . .Most important, however, The New Deal and Beyond calls attention to the need for a broader reexamination of the state and local dimensions of the expansion of the twentieth-century American welfare state. -- <i>Reviews in American History</i> These ten essays fulfill the editor's goal of laying out a new set of research strategies and analytical models for southern welfare history. -- <i>Alabama Review</i>