The FDR Years [Hardcover]

William E. Leuchtenburg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1995

"Happy days are here again." That was the rallying cry of a nation picking itself up from the black gloom of the Great Depression with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt left an indelible stamp on America and the Oval Office - many have gone so far as to call him the father of the modern American presidency. This text paints a picture of Roosevelt and the American decade he has come to define. The book investigates the many facets of Roosevelt's politics and personality that inspired a nation to believe that the presidency had been reborn. This account tells the story of Roosevelt's uniquely open relationship with the press, a sea change from previous presidential protocol, prompting one editor to proclaim that "for box office attraction you leave Clark Gable gasping for breath." It recounts the myth and history of the First Hundred Days, when Congress was said to be so trusting of their president that they "did not so much debate the bills it passed...as salute them as they went sailing by." Leuchtenburg details the massive impact Roosevelt had on presidents who followed, and on the American people, from the touching story of an impressionable young Republican couple who petitioned to have their son's name changed from Herbert Hoover Jones to Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones in the mid-1930s, to John F. Kennedy's famed "New Frontier" address of 1960, practically paraphrased from a 1935 speech by FDR. Leuchtenburg, who grew up like so many Americans listening to Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats" on the radio, peers into the less flattering details of FDR's world as well. He recounts Roosevelt's almost tyrannical attempts to control all of his government's dealings, threatening to override Congressional decisions that did not go his way.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Any list of the New Deal's premier historians must include Leuchtenburg, best known for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (LJ 6/15/63), which is familiar to four decades of undergraduates. Like his previous works, the nine pieces collected here are concerned with the record as well as the reverberations of the New Deal. All but one were previously published and all have been revised lightly to moderately since they were originally presented as articles, chapters, interview, or addresses. Leuchtenburg is among the generation of historians who lived through the New Deal before creating a monumental body of interpretation. Recently, he published The Supreme Court Reborn (LJ 3/15/95), a gathering of his work on the court of those years. As Leuchtenburg approaches retirement, these two latest titles will hang like plaques honoring an outstanding career. In sum, the present work offers a fine precis of this historian's assessment of the New Deal, suitable for all academic and some public libraries.?Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The FDR Years will serve as benchmark and provocation. An absorbing collection of eight essays and an oral-history interview with the author... the book covers topics from Roosevelt's relationship with Huey Long to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the New Deal's use of the war metaphor. As a whole, it reacts to the criticisms of the New Deal and its leader made over the past thirty years and anticipates those of the next.

(Washington Post )

Leuchtenburg's ability to present a compelling, informed analysis and to draw readers into the world of national politics makes this collection an essential part of any understanding of FDR, the New Deal, and their joint legacy.

(Journal of American History )

Product Details

• Hardcover: 377 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231082983
• ISBN-13: 978-0231082983
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,771,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Essays from the Leading Historian of FDR, May 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The FDR Years (Hardcover)

In this fine collection of essays, William Leuchtenburg provides an excellent companion piece to his masterpiece, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Anyone interested in a general overview of FDR's presidency should check out that book first. This is meant more as a series of insights on highly specific topics, mostly culled from invited lectures that Leuchtenburg has given around the world.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Essays on the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, September 4, 2004

By 

T. Carlsen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy (Paperback)

These superb essays are essential for understanding the impact of the Franklin Roosevelt presidency and his policies over time. This book is not a biography of FDR. It is an important reflection of his presidency.

Here is a very good review of the book I found by presidential historian Michael R. Beschloss at the Washington Post website.

"FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT defied tradition in so many ways that it is not surprising that he has seemed to defy even the normal rules of history. After leaving office, an American president usually endures a period of historical eclipse...

"The architect of the New Deal and the world's saving from fascism did not have to undergo any historical waiting period. The first major wave of Roosevelt scholarship a decade or two after FDR's death -- books by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Frank Freidel of Harvard, James MacGregor Burns of Williams, John Morton Blum of Yale, and William E. Leuchtenburg, then of Columbia -- resoundingly affirmed his greatness...

"Now that the Cold War is over and the domestic consensus about the role of government has fractured, we may have to hold onto our hats for the next great torrent of Roosevelt scholarship. Conservatives will likely turn up the heat against Roosevelt's role in the establishment of a permanent welfare state. Left-liberals will probably be more angry than ever that he failed to do more. Neo-isolationists will fire new fusillades against the four-term one-worlder in the White House.

"In such an atmosphere, William Leuchtenburg's The FDR Years will serve as benchmark and provocation. An absorbing collection of eight essays and an oral-history interview with the author, most previously published but vigorously revised, the book covers topics from Roosevelt's relationship with Huey Long to the Tennessee Valley Authority and the New Deal's use of the war metaphor...

"The first is the importance of the New Deal. Leuchtenburg recalls that by the early 1970s, the chief academic attack on Roosevelt's domestic leadership was coming not from conservatives but from the New Left. So much had such scholars shaped the literature that a Harvard friend told Leuchtenburg that his students took it 'to be axiomatic that the New Deal amounted to very little,' not much more than a 'spirited evasion of the overriding issues of the twentieth century'...

"In a chapter called 'The Achievement of the New Deal' (based on his 1972 Harnsworth inaugural lecture at Oxford), Leuchtenburg defends the importance of Roosevelt's domestic programs to American life. They 'radically altered the character of the State in America,' expanded presidential power, transformed the relationship between government and finance, labor and management, started 'a new system of social rights to replace dependence on private charity,' opened the American power structure to new groups and brought about the great political realignment of the mid-1930s.

"The second front in the struggle for Roosevelt's place in history can be thought to be the leadership qualities of the man himself. Leuchtenburg lauds Roosevelt's triumph in 'leading the nation to accept the far-ranging responsibilities of world power,' his considerable success with Congress and his eclectic approach to administration. But he grounds his case for Roosevelt as leader on 'his role in enlarging the presidential office and expanding the domain of the State while leading the American people through the Great Depression.' He shows how Roosevelt helped to change America and the world between 1933 and 1945, making him 'one of the few American presidents who looms large not just in the history of the United States but also in the history of the world' and 'the standard by which every successor has been, and may well continue to be, measured.'

"Only a minority of scholars today will argue strenuously against the importance of the New Deal or FDR's resourcefulness as leader. This opens the way for the third broad front: the wisdom of Roosevelt's domestic and international purposes and the effect they have had on the past half-century. As Leuchtenburg writes, evaluations of presidential greatness 'often say more about the ideological predisposition of scholars than about the nature of presidential performance.' Ever since his death, Franklin Roosevelt has been a figure not just of history but current politics. At a time in which our political culture is debating the extent of the welfare state, presidential power and America's responsibilities in the world, FDR is likely to become an even more contemporary figure. The next generation of historians can be expected to draw portraits of the hero that will be unrecognizable to many of those who began writing about Roosevelt in the 1950s and 1960s. Against such evaluations, The FDR Years will provide us with a point of comparison."

0 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 26, 2000

By 

Tessa Wyborny (Walnut Creek, CA. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The FDR Years (Hardcover)

This book did not cover the most important aspects of the amazing presidency of Roosevelt. It rather covered the details of things that were said about him and his opposition. I found a lot of the book to be a waste, for example in the chapter entitled "FDR and the Kingfish" the majority of the chapter was written about Huey Long and not about Roosevelt. If you want to learn about what FDR did read the encyclopedia.