“In this meticulously researched, briskly written biography, Steven Fenberg … makes a strong case for Jones’s influence and, in so doing, not only recovers the forgotten history of this key player but also intervenes forcefully in contemporary history and political debates about the New Deal and the nature of politics.”
Bruce J. Schulman, Boston University,
The Journal of Southern History,
February 2013
Winner of
The San Antonio
Conservation Society
2013 Citation
the 2012 Ottis Lock Award
and
The Texas Institute of Letters
Carr P. Collins award for
best non-fiction book of 2011
“Next to the President, no man in the Government and probably in the United States wields greater powers.”
Saturday Evening Post, November 30, 1940
“Don’t ask me what I have done on matters of business … The only person I am going to see within the next 36 hours is Jesse Jones.”
Franklin Roosevelt, July 16, 1933
As President Barack Obama began to unveil sweeping government programs to restore the crippled economy, the public and media drew numerous comparisons with the actions of President Franklin Roosevelt, who faced the grim prospect of the Great Depression almost eighty years earlier. Now, Steven Fenberg tells the story of Jesse Holman Jones, the Houston businessman who went to Washington as an appointed official and provided the pragmatic leadership that salvaged capitalism during the Great Depression and militarized industry in time to fight and win World War II.
Jones—an entrepreneur with an eighth-grade education who built Houston’s tallest buildings of the time—was considered to be the most powerful person in the nation next to President Roosevelt.
As chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Jones saved farms, homes, banks, and businesses; built infrastructure; set the price of gold with FDR each morning in the President’s bedroom; and in the process made a substantial profit for the government. Then Jones turned the RFC’s focus from domestic economics to global defense.
In writing the comprehensive, definitive biography of this imposing twentieth-century figure, Fenberg had unrestricted access to the collections of Houston Endowment—the philanthropic foundation established by Jesse and Mary Gibbs Jones in 1937—and utilized the archives of the Library of Congress, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the Houston Public Library, and an impressive array of other sources.
According to Fenberg, Jones recognized that he would prosper only if his community thrived, a belief that directed him to combine capitalism and public service to strengthen his community, to restore the fortunes of his country, and to save nations.
As we grapple today with economic recovery, the role of government, and reliance on other nations for vital resources, Unprecedented Power, published by Texas A&M University Press, offers a fascinating and timely perspective. Students and scholars of government and business history, as well as policy makers, regional historians, and interested general readers, will find this book an indispensable addition to their libraries.
Through its Collection Enhancement Program,
the Tocker Foundation has donated “Unprecedented Power”
to 50 small-town public libraries in Texas.
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