New Democracy, William J. Novak
New Democracy, William J. Novak
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

New Democracy
The Creation of the Modern American State

Author: William J. Novak

Narrator: A.W. Miller

Unabridged: 12 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/06/2022


Synopsis

The activist state of the New Deal started forming decades before the FDR administration, demonstrating the deep roots of energetic government in America.

In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. A series of legal reforms gradually brought an end to nineteenth-century traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked through legislation, regulation, and public administration.

William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated people's rights. Over the course of decades, Americans progressively discarded earlier understandings of the reach and responsibilities of government and embraced the idea that legislators and administrators in Washington could tackle economic regulation and social-welfare problems. As citizens witnessed the successes of an energetic, interventionist state, they demanded more of the same, calling on politicians and civil servants to address unfair competition and labor exploitation, form public utilities, and reform police power.

About William J. Novak

William J. Novak is the author of the prizewinning The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America and coeditor of Corporations and American Democracy and The Democratic Experiment. He is Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Frank

Most of this book will not surprise any readers in the history of what's called "American Political Development." Novak describes the rise of state police powers and the federal commerce powers, the importance of the expanding regulation of "common callings" into any business "affected with a public......more

Goodreads review by Josh

Dense.......more