Considering the amount of historical cluelessness floating around about the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the efficacy of FDR’s big-government solutions, Dr. Robert Murphy has picked a good time to release The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Murphy wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism earlier for the PIG series, which gives a fun, light treatment to weightier subjects. Murphy now works at the Ludwig von Mises Institute among other econ-policy think tanks and has a long track record on free-market economics.

Among the points Murphy makes in the book:

• FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression; instead, he prolonged it
• The Fed deserves most of the blame for the bubble and the crash in 2008
• Herbert Hoover and George Bush have more in common than one thinks
• The free market did not cause the crash of 1929 or the Great Depression, and government intervention did not end it

I’ll be interviewing Dr. Murphy next Thursday at 3:30 pm ET on The Ed Morrissey Show. Be sure to tune in — and don’t forget to buy your textbooks first!