Legacy of The New Deal in California

Although it certainly built some nice buildings etc. on the whole the New Deal was a failure. The Depression hit bottom in 1937, in the first year of Roosevelt's SECOND term. FDR herded the US into war by unconstitutional means -- "lied the US into war," as many congressmen said at the time & as historians have established since -- partly as an alternative to his failed (or blocked, or both) economic programs. A good review of this material, with massive indisputable official documentary evidence, is Frederic Sanborn, Design For War (NY 1951). Two other important examinations of this record are Charles Beard's books on American Foreign Policy In The Making 1932-1940 and on Roosevelt's foreign policy in 1941.

In the 1920s in America, England, and France, historians looked again at the facts of WWI and at the causes, & pretty largely demolished -- as not fact -- the propaganda history of German 'guilt' for WWI on which the Treaty of Versailles was based. This trend in historiography in American got called "Revisionism," and it carried the day, not only in academic discussion but at a popular level; books laying out its case were Book-of-the-Month Club selections in the 30s, etc. In 1946 the Rockefeller Foundation & others started making big grants to see that this sort of thing didn't happen again. And as far as public perception, it pretty much didn't & still hasn't. Works by established major historians like Beard who couldn't be ignored were smeared, others were simply ignored.

Tours of pretty buildings are nice but what the citizens of this country could use is some honest history.