Ebook: American-made: the enduring legacy of the WPA: when FDR put the nation to work

When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, 13 million American workers were jobless ... What people wanted were jobs, not handouts ... and in 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs program was created. This was the Works Progress Administration, and it would forever change the physical landscape and the social policies of the United States. The WPA lasted for eight years, spent $11 billion, and employed 8 1/2 million men and women. [It] combined the urgency of putting people back to work with a vision of physically rebuilding America. Its workers laid roads, erected dams, bridges, tunnels, and airports. They stocked rivers, made toys, sewed clothes, served millions of hot school lunches ... And all across the country the WPA's Arts programs performed concerts, staged plays, painted murals, delighted children with circuses, [and] created invaluable guidebooks.-Dust jacket.;Prologue -- Extremis -- Hope on the rise -- Dawn of the WPA -- Folly and triumph -- Arts programs -- Phantom of recovery -- WPA under attack -- WPA, War Preparation Agency -- Legacy of the WPA -- Glossary -- Some highlights of the WPA -- Chronology, 1929-1946.