Jonathan Chait and the Economist yammer

In a recent edition of the Saturday Review Jonathan Chait did a long and quite unfair review of Amity Schlaes excellent history of the Great Depression. He tries to argue that Shlaes is sloppy in her scholarship and makes conclusions that most of the economics profession disagrees with. The Economist took a similar tack in their recent edition. The question about whether there is full consensus about the causes of the Great Depression and the efficacy of FDRs policies. In a 1995 article in the Journal of Economic History the following conclusion was offered -

"On top of the profession's lack of agreement about the genesis of the Great Depression, there is a disagreement about the effect of the New Deal. In fact, the economists in the sample are almost evenly divided on the question of whether or not when taken "as a whole, government policies of the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen the Great Depression."

Schlaes seems to be pretty much in the mainstream of a very healthy debate. One wonders why Chait and the Economist are so twitterpated about Schlaes book.