Roosevelt Sweeps Nation
FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for US History
From the acclaimed author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents and 1960: LJB vs JFK vs Nixon—The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies
comes a dazzling panorama of presidential and political personalities,
ambitions, plots, and counterplots; racism, anti-Semitism,
anti-socialism, and anti-communism, and the landslide referendum on
FDR’s New Deal policies in the 1936 presidential election.
Award-winning
historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative
regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide,
weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a
polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and
politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top
of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our
society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.
With
in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long
and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36;
powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who
blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator
Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash
against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and
Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New
Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America.
Crafting
his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary
and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original,
and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at
the crossroads. The nation’s stakes were high . . . and the parallels
hauntingly akin to today’s dangerously strife-ridden political and
culture wars.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Pietrusza (1920: The Year of Six Presidents) delivers a sweeping yet minutely detailed chronicle of FDR's 1936 reelection campaign. After easily defeating Herbert Hoover in 1932 by promising salvation to those suffering the Great Depression, in 1936 Roosevelt was faced with the reality that "ten million workers remained jobless" despite unprecedented federal spending. The public, Pietrusza suggests, was split over whether Roosevelt was bankrupting the country on his march toward socialism. During the 1936 primaries, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst threw his weight behind Republican challenger Alf Landon, while Democrats searched hard for an alternative before finally settling on Roosevelt. Setting out to convince "roughly half the people that the glass was half-full" and that Republicans themselves had impeded the country's economic recovery, Roosevelt oozed "charm and reassurance," drawing a sharp contrast to Landon, a "lackluster" campaigner. Riding the coattails of Roosevelt's landslide victory, Democrats gained seats in Congress and governors' offices. He was aided, Pietrusza shows, by concrete economic gains—the November jobless rate of 13.9% was the lowest since 1931. Though lengthy profiles of various political players on both sides of the campaign bog down the narrative momentum somewhat, this is an exhaustive and expert chronicle of a critical American election.
