The G.I. Bill

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Mar 23, 2009 - History - 379 pages
Scholars have argued about U.S. state development - in particular its laggard social policy and weak institutional capacity - for generations. Neo-institutionalism has informed and enriched these debates, but, as yet, no scholar has reckoned with a very successful and sweeping social policy designed by the federal government: the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the GI Bill. Kathleen J. Frydl addresses the GI Bill in the first study based on systematic and comprehensive use of the records of the Veterans Administration. Frydl's research situates the Bill squarely in debates about institutional development, social policy and citizenship, and political legitimacy. It demonstrates the multiple ways in which the GI Bill advanced federal power and social policy, and, at the very same time, limited its extent and its effects.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
36
Section 2
39
Section 3
54
Section 4
69
Section 5
100
Section 6
122
Section 7
125
Section 8
146
Section 15
203
Section 16
204
Section 17
211
Section 18
222
Section 19
254
Section 20
263
Section 21
279
Section 22
286

Section 9
147
Section 10
160
Section 11
167
Section 12
173
Section 13
179
Section 14
186
Section 23
303
Section 24
312
Section 25
319
Section 26
338
Section 27
352

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About the author (2009)

Kathleen J. Frydl has been an assistant professor in the history department at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2003. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2000, she worked at the National Academy of Sciences for three years before moving to the west coast. She has held academic awards from the University of Chicago, the Mellon Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.