Originally published on January 15, 2024 (Episode 346)
Introduction
Henry Wallace was an Iowan, an accomplished geneticist who hybridized corn; an entrepreneur who co-founded the Pioneer Hi-Bred corporation to produce seed, which remains to this an agricultural behemoth; the third generation of editors of an influential American newspaper; a mystic with 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 (Simon and Schuster, 2025), which is the subject of our conversation today.
About the Guest
Benn Steil is Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of numerous books, including on the Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods.
For Further Investigation
Benn Steil, The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
—, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
—, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books, 2013)
Related Episodes
With Jon Lauck about “The Lost Region”
Another with Jon Lauck about the history of the midwest, very suggestive of the Wallace philosophy of politics and life
Henry Cantwell Wallace (1866–1924): Secretary of Agriculture, father of Henry Cantwell Wallace
On the connection between George Washington Carver, Henry Wallace, and Norman Borlaug
💬 Listen & Discuss
Was Henry Wallace a visionary statesman ahead of his time, or a political eccentric whose mysticism and radical ideas undermined his influence? Share your thoughts in the comments, and pass this episode along to someone interested in U.S. politics, agriculture, and the Cold War era.
