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CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025

A definitive history of the United States’ recovery from the Great Depression—and the New Deal's true part in it.

FDR’s New Deal has long enjoyed a special place in American history and policy—both because it redefined the government’s fundamental responsibilities and because Roosevelt’s “bold experimentation” represented a type of policymaking many would like to see repeated.

But “the thing about bold experiments,” economist George Selgin reminds us, “is that they often fail.” In False Dawn Selgin draws on both contemporary sources and numerous studies by economic historians to show that, although steps taken during the Roosevelt administration’s first days raised hopes of a speedy recovery from the Great Depression, instead of fulfilling those hopes, subsequent New Deal policies proved so counterproductive that over seventeen percent of American workers—more than the peak unemployment rate during the COVID-19 crisis—were still either unemployed or on work relief six years later.

By distinguishing the New Deal’s successes from its failures, and explaining how the U.S. finally managed to lay the specter of mass unemployment to rest, Selgin draws salient lessons for dealing with future recessions.

In 1933, George L. Mosse fled Berlin and settled in the United States, where he went on to become a renowned historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Through rigorous and innovative scholarship, Mosse uncovered the forces that spurred antisemitism, racism, nationalism, and populism. His transformative work was propelled by a desire to know his own persecutors and has been vital to generations of scholars seeking to understand the cultural and intellectual origins and mechanisms of Nazism.
 
This translation makes Emilio Gentile’s groundbreaking study of Mosse’s life and work available to English language readers. A leading authority on fascism, totalitarianism, and Mosse’s legacy, Gentile draws on a wealth of published and unpublished material, including letters, interviews, lecture plans, and marginalia from Mosse’s personal library. Gentile details how the senior scholar eschewed polemics and employed rigorous academic standards to better understand fascism and the “catastrophe of the modern man”—how masculinity transformed into a destructive ideology. As long as wars are waged over political beliefs in popular culture, Mosse’s theories of totalitarianism will remain as relevant as ever.

An autobiographical account of the armed resistance against the Soviet Union, which took place between 1944–1956. Published in English for the first time in unabridged form, Lukša's memoir remains one of the few reliable eye-witness accounts of the "Invisible Front", as dubbed by Soviet security forces. At its zenith 28,000 guerilla fighters participated in battles and skirmishes throughout Lithuania, Lukša (partisan codename Daumantas) being one of the leaders. Forest Brothers also documents the role of women in the resistance, giving equal credit to these often silent partners. In 1948 Lukša and two comrades broke through the Iron Curtain on the Polish border. He sought training from the French intelligence and from the CIA. Lukša was flown back into the Soviet Union under the radar on the night of October 4, 1950. He managed to survive and operate eleven months until his near capture and death on the night of September 5, 1951. His account, written during 1948–1950, while he was living in hiding in Paris, describes in vivid scenes and dialogue the daily struggles of the resistance.