These days, no economic myth is more pernicious than the theory that the free market caused the Great Depression and the New Deal got us out of it. Worse, says economist Robert J. Murphy, this unsubstantiated fiction is now being used to justify President Obama's "new New Deal," which could lead to a second Great Depression that is even deeper and longer than the first.

In his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, Murphy provides irrefutable evidence that government interference with the market caused the Great Depression—and our current economic collapse. Murphy also shows why Herbert Hoover's and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's big government policies made the Great Depression much longer and much worse—just as President Barack Obama's extraordinary expansion of government promises to do today.

Exposing the untold story about the Great Depression and the New Deal, Murphy reveals the "real lessons" of the 1920s and 30s, including why:

The Crash of '29 was caused not by capitalism, but by the boom brought on by the newly created Federal Reserve's easy money policy (sound familiar?)

Hoover made the Depression "Great" precisely by abandoning the laissez-faire approach that previous presidents had followed and that kept economic downturns short

FDR's New Deal did not get us out of the Great Depression, but his big government policies did prolong it

Government efforts to prop up wages and prices led to a full decade of double-digit unemployment

Might Barack Obama be the new FDR? You'll know, after reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal that if he is, that's nothing to celebrate.