Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era

This book should be on the reading list of any course that touches upon the 1920s and 1930s. Ortiz examines the pivotal role the bonus question played in stoking the anti-New Deal movement lead by Charles Coughlin and Huey Long and how settling this issue proved essential for FDRs decisive electoral victory in 1936. - G. Kurt Piehler (Remembering War the American Way) "Ortiz (Bowling Green State Univ.) has written an interesting account of a neglected component of politics during the New Deal era-- the impact of organized WWI veterans... This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the history of veteran politics and New Deal politics. (CHOICE) Ortiz's book is an excellent contribution to a historical episode in need of political contextualization. - Jeremy M. Teigen (Political and Military Sociology) So much has been written about America in the 1930s that it is hard to say anything new. But, mounting a vigorous argument, Ortiz demonstrates convincingly that scholars have neglected a very important development in this period. Thanks to him, historians will be compelled to rewrite their accounts of the age of Roosevelt. - William E. Leuchtenburg,author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 Stimulating, clearly written, and meticulously documented. (The Journal of Military History) Moving beyond other well documented examples of activism by former servicemen . . . Ortiz traces the fortunes of the two major U.S. veterans organizations, the first the patrician American Legion . . . the second the older, smaller and scrappier Veterans of Foreign Wars. (Times Literary Supplement)