Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created ModernAmerica [Hardcover]

Adam Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2009

A revealing account of the critical first days of FDR’s presidency, during the worst moments of the Great Depression, when he and his inner circle launched the New Deal and presided over the birth of modern America

Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history—the tense, feverish first one hundred days of FDR’s presidency, when he and his inner circle swept away the old order and reinvented the role of the federal government. When FDR took his oath of office in March 1933, thousands of banks had gone under following the Crash of 1929, a quarter of American workers were unemployed, farmers were in open rebellion, and hungry people descended on garbage dumps and fought over scraps of food. Before the Hundred Days, the federal government was limited in scope and ambition; by the end, it had assumed an active responsibility for the welfare of all of its citizens.

Adam Cohen offers an illuminating group portrait of the five members of FDR’s inner circle who played the greatest roles in this unprecedented transformation, revealing in turn what their personal dynamics suggest about FDR’s leadership style. These four men and one woman frequently pushed FDR to embrace more activist programs than he would have otherwise. FDR came to the White House with few firm commitments about how to fight the Great Depression—as a politician he was more pragmatic than ideological, and, perhaps surprising, given his New Deal legacy, by nature a fiscal conservative. To develop his policies, he relied heavily on his advisers, and preferred when they had conflicting views, so that he could choose the best option among them.

For this reason, he kept in close confidence both Frances Perkins—a feminist before her time, and the strongest advocate for social welfare programs—and Lewis Douglas— an entrenched budget cutter who frequently clashed with the other members of FDR’s progressive inner circle. A more ideological president would have surrounded himself with advisors who shared a similar vision, but rather than commit to a single solution or philosophy, FDR favored a policy of “bold, persistent experimentation.” As a result, he presided over the most feverish period of government activity in American history, one that gave birth to modern America.

As Adam Cohen reminds us, the political fault lines of this era—over welfare, government regulation, agriculture policy, and much more—remain with us today. Nothing to Fear is both a riveting narrative account of the personal dynamics that shaped the tumultuous early days of FDR’s presidency, and a character study of one of America’s defining leaders in a moment of crisis.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New York Times editorial board member Cohen (coauthor, American Pharaoh) delivers an exemplary and remarkably timely narrative of FDR's famous first Hundred Days as president. Providing a new perspective on an oft-told story, Cohen zeroes in on the five Roosevelt aides-de-camp whom he rightly sees as having been the most influential in developing FDR's wave of extraordinary actions. These were agriculture secretary Henry Wallace, presidential aide Raymond Moley, budget director Lewis Douglas, labor secretary Frances Perkins and Civil Works Administration director Harry Hopkins. This group, Cohen emphasizes, did not work in concert. The liberal Perkins, Wallace and Hopkins often clashed with Douglas, one of the few free-marketers in FDR's court. Moley hovered somewhere in between the two camps. As Cohen shows, the liberals generally prevailed in debates. However, the vital foundation for FDR's New Deal was crafted through a process of rigorous argument within the president's innermost circle rather than ideological consensus. Cohen's exhaustively researched and eloquently argued book provides a vital new level of insight into Roosevelt's sweeping expansion of the federal government's role in our national life. (Jan. 12)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Critics agree that by focusing on five aides to the president, Nothing to Fear provides a new and interesting perspective on an epochal period in American politics. Cohen gears his writing to the lay reader, sparing the heavy policy analysis and producing a narrative both enjoyable and compelling. While the New York Times Book Review notes that focusing only on FDR's first 100 days might yield a misleading impression of the New Deal and that Cohen's framework—the five biographical sketches of five key FDR aides—represents "only a sampling of the many planets orbiting Roosevelt's sun," reviewers generally agree that Cohen's close view serves his book well. By examining five aides with diverse political views, Cohen insightfully sketches the ideological complexity of FDR's start in office, while also establishing a perspective on the committed leftward course his presidency ultimately took. 
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; 1St Edition edition (January 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159420196X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201967
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Narrative History, but not a Template for 2009, February 7, 2009

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Jonathan Zasloff - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created ModernAmerica (Hardcover)

Nothing to Fear is a superb work of narrative. Cohen writes very well, and his portraits of FDR's key advisors during the One Hundred Days are sensitively drawn as well as accurate.

Roosevelt himself seems to take a back seat in the narrative, and to a large extent, this works well, because it helps to explain why the legislation that emerged out of the One Hundred Days seemed so contradictory. The Economic Act, backed by fierce fiscal conservative budget director Lewis Douglas, slashed spending, eliminated thousands of federal workers, and cut off thousands of injured veterans from their disability payments. Yet the National Industrial Recovery Act contained the most massive public works program in US history -- no doubt because those provisions were the brainchild of Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who had little use for the Hooverism of Douglas.

Nothing to Fear is particuarly useful because it organizes for the reader what was in fact an unorganized storm of legislation. And it does this also by looking through the prism of Roosevelt's advisors. Thus, we can see some of the main outlines by following these personnel: 1) the Banking Act (Raymond Moley); 2) the Economy Act (Douglas); 3) the Agricultural Adjustment Act (Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace); 4) the public works provisions in the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Civilian Conservation Corps (Perkins); and 5) the Federal Emergency Relief Act (Harry Hopkins, who did not show up until the 73rd day). And Cohen's narrative talents are deft enough also to seamlessly weave in other major pieces of legislation such as the Securities Act of 1933 and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

So if you are looking for a riveting narrative of the period, then Nothing To Fear is your book.

Analytically, however, the book falls somewhat short -- thus, 4 stars. Cohen focuses on the advisors, but by the end of the story, it becomes clear that Roosevelt remained firmly in control. Douglas initially won the battle over spending because of Roosevelt's innate fiscal conservatism; Perkins and Hopkins (and to a lesser extent Wallace) eventually won the war because Roosevelt either changed his mind or came to see that the contradiction between fiscal conservatism and vigorous federal action could no longer be papered over. Why? What happened in Roosevelt's mind? While we cannot put the 32nd President on the couch, we can at least review the possible explanations and see which one fits better.

Moreover, Cohen does the New Deal a disservice by looking at it from so high a perspective. He argues that The Hundred Days changed the nature of the federal government because it recognized that economic prosperity was a federal responsibility. Perhaps. But the NATURE of federal involvement was a critical difference. The NIRA's National Recovery Administration, and the AAA's Agricultural Adjustment Administration took centralized planning to a level not seen before -- or since. Instead, the New Deal gradually transformed itself into a more social welfare direction, with the Social Security Act, the Wagner Act, the WPA etc. That is a very different direction from centralized planning. Cohen recognizes this, but it doesn't quite fit into his narrative, so he sort of buries it at the end.

That said, Nothing to Fear is well worth reading. It is hardly a model for 2009, because conditions are different, and just as importantly, the Republican Party, unlike in 1933, has decided to obstruct as much as it can. Today's GOP has already essentially attempted to filibuster the stimulus package -- a path that would have been unheard of in 1933. But it does show how policy evolves by fits and starts, and what emerged by 1936 was not predicted by the pundits in 1933. And that is a lesson worth recalling today.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A microscope focused on FDR's first 100 days and his initial team, August 14, 2009

By 

Arthur Amchan (McLean, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (Hardcover)

Even those who believe they are familiar with Roosevelt and the New Deal are likely to be surprised to learn things they did not know from this book. Adam Cohen's "Nothing to Fear" is 318 pages long and is fairly easy to read and deals almost exclusively with the first 100 days of FDR's administration. In many books that cover the 12 years of the Roosevelt's presidency some of the finer details of the beginnings of his administration become obscured, particularly in comparison to FDR's stewardship of the war effort between 1941 and his death in April 1945.

The reader should be struck by the similarities between the current economic crisis and the much more dire situation that faced Roosevelt upon taking office in March 1933. Although not novel, Cohen makes it clear that FDR had few fixed ideas about what to do about the Depression and was willing to try a variety of things to see what would work. Unlike Hoover, however, Roosevelt was not willing to simply let nature takes its course. Many of his initial programs, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Recovery Act were aimed at ending the Depression by restricting competition.

FDR knew little about economics, had many conservative instincts and his administration included several very conservative personalities in it, most notably Lewis Douglas (also an anti-Semite), the budget director. As Cohen tells the story, there was a battle for FDR's soul won by the liberal or progressive members of the administration, notably Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, advisors Rexford Tugwell and Harry Hopkins. Cohen includes mini biographies of many of these figures, as well as one of Raymond Moley, FDR's principal advisor, who fell out with him in the mid-1930s.

One of the most surprising things I learned from Cohen's book is that FDR was very much opposed to Federal Deposit Insurance, now one of the least controversial New Deal programs, and threatened to veto it. Politicians such as Vice President John Nance Gardner and Senator Huey Long forced the program down FDR's throat.

Cohen also highlights the role of Congressional figures such as Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr. (often confused with his more famous father who died in 1925), Robert F. Wagner and Colorado's Edward Costigan (who I'd never heard of prior to reading this book) in initiating and pushing for much of the early New Deal legislation.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Look Beyond Roosevelt, June 25, 2009

By 

Mike W. (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created ModernAmerica (Hardcover)

Adam Cohen's "Nothing to Fear" is a great read on the the New Deal. When I picked up this book, I expected to read a lot about Roosevelt himself.

What makes this book great is its focus on the characters that really deserve the credit (or blame, in the eyes of conservatives). He brings about the fascinating stories of Francis Perkins, Henry A Wallace, Harry Hopkins, and the lone conservative, Lewis Douglas. Cohen especially focuses on Perkins' role, as the woman whose policies and goals were also seen through during the New Deal. These people were the ones devising policy, as Roosevelt himself was against massive public works projects originally.

A great read, and a clear outline of the New Deal. It also makes the argument that although shifting away from Douglas/Hoover conservatism, it was not the socialism it could have been.