Episode 346: The World That Wasn’t

Historically Thinking

Henry Wallace was an Iowan, an accomplished geneticist who hybridized corn; an entrepreneur who co-founded Pioneer Hi-Bred to produce seed, still an agricultural behemoth; the third-generation of editors of an influential American newspaper; a mystic who had a mysterious guru; and a “liberal philosopher”, according to no less an authority than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was also at various times Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Vice President of the United States, and a third-party candidate for President of the United States in the 1948 election. Like America, Henry Wallace contained multitudes. With me today is Benn Steil, author of The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. Benn Steil is a Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations. His previous books have been on the Marshall Plan, and on the financial arguments focused upon the Bretton Woods conference. In this book we have yet another study examining the central moment of the twentieth century–both chronologically as well as in many other ways–but from the extraordinary and idiosyncratic point of view of Henry Wallace. For Further Investigation For more on Wallace's Midwestern ethos, see my conversations with Jon Lauck about the Midwest: here, way back in Episode 13 (!!!), and again in Episode 299: The Good Country Benn Steill's previous books are The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, and The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order Henry Cantwell Wallace (1866-1924): Secretary of Agriculture, father of Henry Cantwell Wallace "A Magazine Called Wallace's Farmer" The connection between George Washington Carver, Henry Wallace, and Norman Borlaug