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Overview
In this groundbreaking study, Meg Jacobs demonstrates how pocketbook politics provided the engine for American political conflict throughout the last century. Beginning with the explosion of prices at the turn of the century, every strike, demonstration, and boycott was, in effect, a protest against rising prices and inadequate income. On one side, a reform coalition of ordinary Americans, mass retailers, and national politicians fought for laws and policies that promoted militant unionism, government price controls, and a Keynesian program of full employment. On the other, small businessmen fiercely resisted this low-price, high-wage agenda, which threatened to bankrupt them.Pocketbook Politics offers a new interpretation of state power by integrating popular politics and elite policymaking. Jacobs breaks new methodological ground by insisting on the centrality of national politics and the state in the nearly century-longfight to fulfill the American dream of abundance.
Editorials
EH.NET
It is a tribute to this first-rate study that it opens up . . . fundamental issues in exciting new ways. Every serious student of modern U.S. political history and political economy will profit from reading Jacobs's path-breaking scholarship.Reviews in American History -
Meg Jacobs strides boldly through the shards of the old, broken narrative and, with her eye on previously overlooked actors and events, constructs a new story of the rise and fall of the New Deal order. This extraordinary work offers a fresh narrative about American liberalism. . . . [O]ne of the most important pieces of political history this decade.The Journal of American History -
Meg Jacobs offers a fresh and persuasive interpretation of major policy developments in the early twentieth century. Pocketbook Politic is a key addition to the growing literature in which the study of consumption promotes synthesis in historical scholarship.Business History Review -
This unapologetic political history [is] refreshingly direct, revealing, and persuasive. It should become a standard text for students of the period." EH.NET ert Collins
It is a tribute to this first-rate study that it opens up . . . fundamental issues in exciting new ways. Every serious student of modern U.S. political history and political economy will profit from reading Jacobs's path-breaking scholarship.
Reviews in American History
Meg Jacobs strides boldly through the shards of the old, broken narrative and, with her eye on previously overlooked actors and events, constructs a new story of the rise and fall of the New Deal order. This extraordinary work offers a fresh narrative about American liberalism. . . . [O]ne of the most important pieces of political history this decade.— Jennifer Mittelstadt
Business History Review
This unapologetic political history [is] refreshingly direct, revealing, and persuasive. It should become a standard text for students of the period.— Gary Cross
The Journal of American History
Meg Jacobs offers a fresh and persuasive interpretation of major policy developments in the early twentieth century. Pocketbook Politic is a key addition to the growing literature in which the study of consumption promotes synthesis in historical scholarship.— Liette Gidlow
Book Details
Published
November 22, 2004
Publisher
Princeton, N.J. ; Princeton University Press, 2005.
Pages
368
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780691086644