“The Forgotten Man” is both history and warning. It’s a great social/political history of the Depression. Rather than a recitation of economic facts, it emphasizes the personalities of relevant leaders in many fields and views the Depression through their interactions, with particular focus on the inability of the government to actually fix the Depression, despite their best (and not-so-best) efforts. The “forgotten man” of the title, in its usual historical frame, refers to Franklin Roosevelt’s use of the term—the politically weak voters on whom Roosevelt focused to get their votes, and supposedly rescued from economic despair. Shlaes resurrects in parallel the original and alternate meaning, of the man who bears the costs of government schemes directed at others. As a readable, incisive history alone, this book is worth reading. I read this book after reading Shlaes’s similarly excellent “Coolidge”—while Shlaes mentions Coolidge in “The Forgotten Man”, she does not really contrast his times to the Depression, but reading the two together allows the reader to profitably do so. Her book is not a polemic, nor …