“This great nation will endure as it has endured,” said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the country reeled from the Great Depression in the 1930s. “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” 
FDR created jobs by building things. His New Deal transformed America.
Blueprint America — with American RadioWorks on public radio — looks back at the Great Depression as America again undergoes hard times in the present day with the Great Recession. President Barack Obama has renewed some of FDR’s New Deal thinking — job creation by building.
FDR put people to work by investing in roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that made America the country we live in today.
We go back to some of these projects as a new generation looks forward to the hope of better times.
“Bridge to Somewhere” is an American RadioWorks production as a part of Blueprint America. Produced by Catherine Winter and edited by Mary Beth Kirchner; help from Scott Hunter. The American RadioWorks team includes Kate Moos, Ochen Kaylan, Craig Thorson, Marc Sanchez, Ellen Guettler, Emily Hanford, Suzanne Pekow, and Stephen Smith.
