Utopian Movements and Ideas of the Great Depression: Dreamers, Believers, and Madmen Donald W.Whisenhunt. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.

Abstract

Movements and Ideas of Great Depression: Dreamers, Believers, and Madmen Donald W. Whisenhunt. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.In Movements and Ideas of Great Depression: Dreamers, Believers, and Madmen, histoubiquity rian Donald Whisenhunt surveys an array of lesserknown reformers during Great Depression, whose ideas ranged from communal living to a Moneyless Government. This study is based around Whisenhunt's assertion that the entire American experience.. .has been a experiment (1). While studies of figures such Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and proponents of New Deal are quite numerous in scholarship, Whisenhunt hopes that this work will fill gap in scholarship surrounding Utopian movements of this period [that] have escaped serious scrutiny until now (175).Utopian Movements centers on six people and/or movements. Whisenhunt has taken on rather unenviable project of fitting these figures together in a unified book, a task at which he is unevenly successful. As space of this review will not permit an exhaustive account of all figures in book, this reviewer will focus on a few that he found particularly compelling or relevant to Whisenhunt's emphasis on American experience being a one.The first selection focuses on Society of America, which reached its pinnacle from 19331936. The Society arose quickly and gained as much half a million or more members during its brief tenure (26). The third chapter focuses on Maury Maverick and Diga Relief Colony, a self-help community that Maverick founded in San Antonio, Texas. The Diga Relief Colony, which was in existence from 1932 to 1933, worked to help poor, but also worked to help world war veterans who were affected especially by hard time of 1930s (31). Despite its efforts, Diga, like most of projects in work, ultimately went into history books a failure. Maverick attributed Diga's failure to inability of communal economics to live alongside a capitalist system.The Socialist Party of America is focus of chapter 5, which primarily discusses ultimate failure of Continental of Workers and Farmers of 1933. The Continental was unable to gain national support for its program, which included a New Declaration of Independence that advocated a conversion to socialism (84). Whisenhunt argues that probably best that can be said for Continental Congress is that it was a case of bad timing, they met after New Deal and Hundred Days had already begun to tackle many of economic concerns Socialist Party had hoped to address (84). …