Richard Lowitt (1922–2018)

Richard Lowitt's book is more narrow than the title suggests. Though ostensibly about "The New Deal and the West," it is really about federal policy in the American West (which he defines as the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest) from 1933 until 1940. This distinction is that Lowitt's focus is on the policies and their implementation from the federal perspective; the details of the operation of the New Deal policies within the states themselves is largely absent from Lowitt's narrative. Perhaps a detailed approach was prohibitively difficult given the scope of his book, but the failure to attempt such an effort limits the utility of this work as a study of the effects of New Deal policies on the American West.… (meer)