The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I [Paperback]

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Age of Roosevelt | Publication Date: July 9, 2003

The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933, volume one of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s Age of Roosevelt series, is the first of three books that interpret the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the early twentieth century in terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the spokesman and symbol of the period. Portraying the United States from the Great War to the Great Depression, The Crisis of the Old Order covers the Jazz Age and the rise and fall of the cult of business. For a season, prosperity seemed permanent, but the illusion came to an end when Wall Street crashed in October 1929. Public trust in the wisdom of business leadership crashed too. With a dramatist’s eye for vivid detail and a scholar’s respect for accuracy, Schlesinger brings to life the era that gave rise to FDR and his New Deal and changed the public face of the United States forever.

Editorial Reviews

Review

While a lot of ink has been spilled profiling FDR, Schlesinger's three-volume work remains among the best efforts. Released in the late 1950s, the trio begins with a broader overview of his early political career and then moves into dissections of far shorter, distinct periods in his ascent to the White House and first term as president. These reprints sport new introductions by the author. Essential for all history and political science collections. 
(Library Journal )

About the Author

ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., the author of sixteen books, was a renowned historian and social critic. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize, in 1946 for The Age of Jackson and in 1966 for A Thousand Days. He was also the winner of the National Book Award for both A Thousand Days and Robert Kennedy and His Times (1979). In 1998 he was awarded the prestigious National Humanities Medal.

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st edition (July 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618340858
• ISBN-13: 978-0618340859
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bancroft Award Winner for History. Classic on FDR's New Deal, April 21, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I (Paperback)

This book won the Bancroft Prize for historical excellence in 1958 and the Francis Parkman Prize for historical excellence at the same time. The four-volume "Age of Roosevelt" is an important history of the Great Depression era, written by a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author. The research of the period is so good that it is considered practically a primary source itself.

However, most general readers interested in the era and President Franklin Roosevelt should read a good FDR biography.

This book, the first volume, covers the years leading up to the Great Depression and then the three long years of Depression under the Republican Congress and Herbert Hoover. The facts are reported as if you were there. Hoover callously said that unemployed people desperately selling apples in the streets were actually doing so because selling apples paid more than their regular jobs. His image was made worse by the Hoovervilles where unemployed people lived in small shacks.

By the way, during the economic contraction, Hoover's Secretary of Treasury, Mellon, deliberately sought a policy of contraction and liquidation, waging war on workers, when he should have been providing liquidity to the system. Hoover's treasury secretary was the worst.

In the second volume of this history, Schlesinger details the bold actions that FDR and the new Democratic Congress took to confront the crisis during FDR's legendary first 100 days. That book is outstanding. It also describes the radicals who found receptive audiences during the Depression, like Long/Coughlin/Townsend, and how FDR outmaneuvered them to avoid radicalism.

FDR won reelection in 1936 with the biggest electoral landslide in modern history, a triumphant endorsement. He won another landslide reeclection in 1940.

Beware of misleading attack books disguised as history that smear Roosevelt without telling the full history and without even including the most important facts, such as the GDP numbers, industrial production numbers, and the stock market numbers in FDR's first term.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Begining of the Age, February 8, 2008

By 

James Gallen (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I (Paperback)

"Crisis of the Old Order" is the outstanding first volume of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s trilogy, the "Age of Roosevelt." Unlike some biographies, this volume provides the reader with the background to understand the world into which FDR strode. After a Prologue of Inauguration Day in 1933, Schlesinger takes the reader back to the Age of Wilson as the world tried to emerge from the horror of World War I. Following that, he follows the nation into the Age of Normalcy presided over by Harding and Coolidge.

While narrating the events of the U.S., Schlesinger skillfully weaves the story of the rising Franklin D. Roosevelt. Part biography, he primarily follows the political career of FDR as he rises from the State Senate to Assistant Secretary of the Navy to Governor of New York. While Roosevelt is rising, Herbert Hoover is shown as losing touch with the nation and the demands of the presidency. The evolving relationship between Roosevelt and Al Smith is revealed layer by layer. This book ends where it began, on Inauguration Day, 1933.

I appreciate a book which helps me to see things differently than I had before. This one meets that test. I had long viewed Roosevelt's unwillingness to support Hoover's initiatives to meet the crisis as a petty politician's use of the nation's misery for personal gain. Schlesinger explains Hoover's messianic belief that only he and his policies can change America and shows his post- election proposals for action to be in the nature of a last attempt to snatch policy victories from the ashes of political defeat. It gives me a greater respect for FDR than I had before this reading. This book gleans the political meanings from seemingly innocuous events, such as pointing out that it was the need to mend political fences which brought Chicago mayor Anton Cermak into the president-elect's car when Zangara's shots rang out in Miami. Schlesinger raised the question of how history would have been different if Zangara's aim had been true and if the car which struck Winston Churchill in New York the year before had ended his life.

Another test which I apply to a book is whether it interests me to read more. This one does. I finished it with a real zest to continue into the second volume. Look for my review on it in a few weeks.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening and Readable History, May 6, 2007

By 

Scott M. Holdaway - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I (Paperback)

I have read a lot of U.S. history covering the New Deal and World War II, so I am quite familiar with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his presidency. This very well written history of the period between World War I and Roosevelt coming to power in 1933 filled in an important gap for me, and I found some very interesting parallels between Hoover and G.W. Bush, which has helped me further understand why our current president acts as he does. The events leading up to, and immediately following, the Great Depression impact today's politics and issues in ways I did not understand prior to reading this book. I find the author, Arthur M. Schlesinger, to be very readable and a very fine writer. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it has helped me to further understand and appreciate the first half of the 20th Century in America.