Back to the Land. Arthurdale, FDR's New Deal, and the Costs of Economic Planning

How New Deal economic policies played out in the small town of Arthurdale, West Virginia Today, the U.S. government is again moving to embrace New Deal-like economic policies. While much has been written about the New Deal from a macro perspective, little has been written about how New Deal programs played out on the ground. In Back to the Land, author CJ Maloney tells the true story of Arthurdale, West Virginia, a town created as a «pet project» of the Roosevelts. Designed to be (in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt) «a human experiment station», she was to create a «New American» citizen who would embrace a collectivist form of life. This book tells the story of what happe…