FDR’s Folly:

Jim Powell’s FDR’s Folly is a good but flawed book. He does a very good job at showing the economic irrationality of a wide range New Deal policies, and of bringing the latest economic research to bear on the effects of those policies.
On the other hand, the book is written in a polemical, over-the-top style that virtually ensures that historians won’t take it seriously. This is really too bad, because most historians (of the New Deal and otherwise) are economically ignorant, and their work would be improved by exposure to economically sound explorations of past American economic policy.
A couple of examples of the problems with the book, on issues on which I have particular knowledge/expertise: (1) Powell cites my book for proposition that 500,000 blacks put out of work by NIRA. This was one New Dealer’s estimate, and I point out that many historians think is exaggerated. Why state a disputed figure as a fact? Why not just say, “as many as” or “some estimate that”? (2)Powell states that Supreme Court Justice James McReynolds, an arch-foe of the New Deal, “didn’t like” Jewish Justices Brandeis and Cardozo. Actually, McReynolds was a raving anti-Semite, and a racist, too. Powell didn’t have to raise the issue at all. Or, he could have simply stated the truth, which I think effects not at all whether McReynolds was right to think the New Deal largely unconstitutional. Instead, an objective reader might conclude that Powell intentionally downplaying McReynolds’ anti-Semitism to buttress the anti-New Deal case.
In short, the book makes a lot of good points, but does so in a way that is unlikely to persuade many readers who were not already inclined to be anti-New Deal.