The Fall of the House of Roosevelt – Brokers of Ideas and Power from FDR to LBJ (Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History) - Softcover

Janeway, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231131097 ISBN 13: 9780231131094

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Unusual book

About this title

Review

The Fall of the House of Roosevelt is a fascinating personal perspective on the New Deal and its aftermath. Michael Janeway's book is an elegant contribution to political as well as to personal history.--Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

[The Fall of the House of Roosevelt's] elegiac tone, its penetrating insights and its evocation of a world when politics truly mattered should find a warm welcome among readers eager to define a new American Century.--Ted Widmer "Chicago Tribune "

[A] bittersweet family memoir and a fresh interpretation of the New Deal.--Christopher Caldwell "New York Times "

[A]n engaging book.--William Lasser "The New Leader "

Janeway has given us a wide-ranging, well-considered, deeply researched and engaging study of Democratic Party developments in the FDR years and succeeding regencies. His thoughtful and penetrating review of the operations of party stalwarts furnishes potent cause for concern to anyone interested in the future of the Democratic Party and of the country.--John S. Monagan "Washington Times "

Containing new material and written from a particularly privileged vantage point, The Fall of the House of Roosevelt is a valuable contribution to New Deal history.--Merle Rubin "Los Angeles Times "

At the heart ofFall of the House of Roosevelt is a thoughtful man's attempt to understand his enigmatic father, and the portions of the book focusing on this pursuit are the author's best work.--Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett "Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer "

earlier American liberalism springs back to life in a remarkable new book, The Fall of the House of Roosevelt--Robert Fulford "National Post Toronto "

With fresh detail and affecting vignettes, rendered in beautiful, evocative prose, Janeway captures the New Dealer's keenness for action.--David Greenberg "American Prospect "

For its insights, balanced tone, and thorough research, this accessible volume will provide stimulating analysis for those readers in the twenty-first century.--Lewis L. Gould "The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society "

Synopsis

In the 1930s a band of smart and able young men, some still in their twenties, helped Franklin D. Roosevelt transform an American nation in crisis. They were the junior officers of the New Deal. Thomas G. Corcoran, Benjamin V. Cohen, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, and James Rowe helped FDR build the modern Democratic Party into a progressive coalition whose command over power and ideas during the next three decades seemed politically invincible. This is the first book about this group of Rooseveltians and their linkage to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Vietnam War debacle. Michael Janeway grew up inside this world. His father, Eliot Janeway, business editor of Time and a star writer for Fortune and Life magazines, was part of this circle, strategizing and practicing politics as well as reporting on these men. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of events and previously unavailable private letters and other documents, Janeway crafts a riveting account of the exercise of power during the New Deal and its aftermath.He shows how these men were at the nexus of reform impulses at the electoral level with reform thinking in the social sciences and the law and explains how this potent fusion helped build the contemporary American state.

Since that time efforts to reinvent government by "brains trust" have largely failed in the U.S. In the last quarter of the twentieth century American politics ceased to function as a blend of broad coalition building and reform agenda setting, rooted in a consensus of belief in the efficacy of modern government.Can a progressive coalition of ideas and power come together again? The Fall of the House of Roosevelt makes such a prospect both alluring and daunting.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0231131097
• ISBN 13: 9780231131094
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352