The Forgotten Man Graphic Edition: A New History of the Great Depression
In transforming her 2008 history of the Depression into a graphic novel, Shlaes removes some of the sting of the original. Although two types of forgotten man are referenced—the jobless working stiff of FDR’s first inaugural address and the voiceless taxpayer of liberal economist William Graham Sumner’s 1876 essay—this book isn’t the story of either. This adaptation features two main figures—1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie and bureaucrat Rexford Guy Tugwell—and their collective presence has an overall humanizing effect, especially as realized by Rivoche, whose understated artwork outclasses that of most other historical comics. Willkie and Tugwell, as well as other prominent figures on both sides, are sympathetically rendered, and a few, such as Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson and black religious-cult leader Father Divine, are brought in to exemplify independent improvement initiatives that were arguably more successful than FDR’s New Deal. The resultant portrait of the era is one of headstrong social engineers trying various nostrums to reduce unemployment, failing, and giving up, voluntarily and not. --Ray Olson