Review of Smith's Berkeley and the New Deal

Read this in the dentist’s waiting room. The New Deal really did a lot for America. There is one anecdote from this book, from a black man, Thomas C. Fleming, who said:

Nobody wanted relief work, because we thought of it as welfare. But when Roosevelt started the WPA, in 1935, it was a lifesaver to me and many others who I knew then.

In the photos of the people constructing the art and buildings of Berkeley, it feels like capturing the construction of America. The labour is not complicated, but it’s joyful for them and the generations that get to enjoy its fruits.

Another quite nice quote from a sailor of the time: “when the future is insecure, the past has a romantic appeal.”