books and bankers can alter history

What did FDR Write Inside His Copy of the Proto-Keynesian Road to Plenty? by Mike Konczal

...Though Roosevelt didn't buy it at first, he thankfully later evolved on the issue. One lucky reason is because a big fan of the book was a Utah banker who read it intensely starting in 1931, when the Depression seemed like it would never end, much less recover. That man's name was Marriner Stoddard Eccles. The rest, as they say, is history. (Except it's not, because we are currently fighting this all over again.) 

The book* itself is a series of conversations among strangers on a Pullman-car over what is going on in the economy.

So if not for a book and an influential fan, things may have turned out very differently.