Amity Shlaes

Amity Shlaes writes book reviews for National Review's Capital Matters. She is at work on two books, a history of the Gilded Age, and a short history of the Twentieth Century economy. Her most recent book is GREAT SOCIETY: A NEW HISTORY (HarperCollins 2019). Readers will remember her 2007 THE FORGOTTEN MAN, a history of the 1930s. The GREAT SOCIETY is the sequel, treating the Great Society programs of the 1960s, as well as Richard Nixon's efforts to continue and build out what Lyndon Johnson started.

Miss Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, COOLIDGE, THE FORGOTTEN MAN, THE FORGOTTEN MAN/GRAPHIC and THE GREEDY HAND.

Miss Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, which gives a college scholarship for academic merit. She serves on the jury of Hayek Prize, a prize for free market books given by the Manhattan Institute.

Miss Shlaes is recipient of the Bradley Prize (2021), the William F. Buckley Prize (2023), the Hayek Prize, the Frederic Bastiat Prize of the International Policy Network, the Warren Brookes Prize (2008) of the American Legislative Exchange Council, as well as being a two-time finalist for the Loeb Prize (Anderson School/UCLA).

She is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale College and did graduate work at the Freie Universitaet Berlin on a DAAD fellowship. She and her husband, the editor and author Seth Lipsky, have four children.