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The People And The President: America's Conversation With FDR
America's Conversation with FDR
For readers of The Greatest Generation, an extraordinary window on the '30s and '40s By the time FDR took his oath of office on March 4, 1933, Americans had been in the depths of the Great Depression for four years. One week later, the President gave the first of what would be thirty-one Fireside Chats. MacArthur Award-winning historian Lawrence W. Levine and independent scholar Cornelia Levine have combed through the millions of letters that flooded the White House in response to the Chats. Grateful, infuriated, proud, scolding, the letters, collected here and combined with the Levines' vivid historical commentary, give testimony to an extraordinary time in our nation's past.
Encouraged by the President ("Tell me your troubles"), farmers, salesmen, housewives, new immigrants, and old Republicans all wrote, telling him about their lives and what they thought of his initiatives. Their words paint a remarkable picture of America, from the hardship of the Depression, to the promise of the New Deal, to the turmoil surrounding our nation's entry into World War II.
Praise for Lawrence W. Levine:
"One of our era's most original historians."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"A master of American history."
--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz
For readers of The Greatest Generation, an extraordinary window on the '30s and '40s By the time FDR took his oath of office on March 4, 1933, Americans had been in the depths of the Great Depression for four years. One week later, the President gave the first of what would be thirty-one Fireside Chats. MacArthur Award-winning historian Lawrence W. Levine and independent scholar Cornelia Levine have combed through the millions of letters that flooded the White House in response to the Chats. Grateful, infuriated, proud, scolding, the letters, collected here and combined with the Levines' vivid historical commentary, give testimony to an extraordinary time in our nation's past.
Encouraged by the President ("Tell me your troubles"), farmers, salesmen, housewives, new immigrants, and old Republicans all wrote, telling him about their lives and what they thought of his initiatives. Their words paint a remarkable picture of America, from the hardship of the Depression, to the promise of the New Deal, to the turmoil surrounding our nation's entry into World War II.
Praise for Lawrence W. Levine:
"One of our era's most original historians."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"A master of American history."
--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz
612 pages, Hardcover
First published June 13, 2002
42 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence W. Levine
21 books18 followersLawrence William Levine was a celebrated American historian. He was born in Manhattan and died in Berkeley, California.
A model of the engaged scholar throughout his life, Levine lived both his scholarship and his politics. From the very outset, he immersed himself in the political life of Berkeley – in, for example, a sleep-in in the rotunda of the state capitol in Sacramento to press for fair housing legislation, and the sit-ins in Berkeley organized by CORE to force stores to hire black people.
He participated in the march from Selma to Montgomery, expressing his solidarity with the civil rights movement. During the Free Speech upheaval at Berkeley, he came to the defense of students protesting a ban on political activity on campus in support of the civil rights movement.
He received numerous awards and accolades over the course of his career, most of which was spent in the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Among the honors bestowed upon him were a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1983, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, election as President of the Organization of American Historians in 1992, recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1994, the 2005 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Historical Association, and the posthumous designation of the Lawrence W. Levine Award, which is given annually by the OAH to the author of the best book in American cultural history.
His books include:
• Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915-1925. Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Highbrow/Lowbrow. Harvard University Press, 1990.
• The Unpredictable Past. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• The Opening of the American Mind. Beacon Press, 1997.
• [with Cornelia R. Levine] The people and the President: America's Conversation with FDR. Beacon Press, 2002.
A model of the engaged scholar throughout his life, Levine lived both his scholarship and his politics. From the very outset, he immersed himself in the political life of Berkeley – in, for example, a sleep-in in the rotunda of the state capitol in Sacramento to press for fair housing legislation, and the sit-ins in Berkeley organized by CORE to force stores to hire black people.
He participated in the march from Selma to Montgomery, expressing his solidarity with the civil rights movement. During the Free Speech upheaval at Berkeley, he came to the defense of students protesting a ban on political activity on campus in support of the civil rights movement.
He received numerous awards and accolades over the course of his career, most of which was spent in the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
Among the honors bestowed upon him were a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1983, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, election as President of the Organization of American Historians in 1992, recognition as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1994, the 2005 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Historical Association, and the posthumous designation of the Lawrence W. Levine Award, which is given annually by the OAH to the author of the best book in American cultural history.
His books include:
• Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915-1925. Oxford University Press, 1965.
• Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Highbrow/Lowbrow. Harvard University Press, 1990.
• The Unpredictable Past. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• The Opening of the American Mind. Beacon Press, 1997.
• [with Cornelia R. Levine] The people and the President: America's Conversation with FDR. Beacon Press, 2002.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 11, 2017
The subtitle of this book refers to FDR’s Fireside Chats as a conversation with the American public for a good reason. People wrote letters -- over 20 million -- to FDR in response to his radio broadcasts.
FDR delivered his chats in simple, easily understood language. His very first chat set them tone for all of them. It was an explanation of the banking system, why it was failing, and what needed to be done. The day after the speech, Will Rogers made a comment that almost everyone agreed with: “Our President took such a dry subject as banking, and made everybody understand it, even the bankers.”
If you want to know desperately Americans needed FDR, consider President Hoover’s explanation of the army of unemployed men selling apples on street corners during the depression. “They left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.” Seriously.
And this statistic: United States Steel, which employed 224,980 full-time workers in 1929, had not a single full-time worker on April 1, 1933.
FDR created not only employment with jobs programs, he created hope for a better day with his Fireside Chats.
FDR delivered his chats in simple, easily understood language. His very first chat set them tone for all of them. It was an explanation of the banking system, why it was failing, and what needed to be done. The day after the speech, Will Rogers made a comment that almost everyone agreed with: “Our President took such a dry subject as banking, and made everybody understand it, even the bankers.”
If you want to know desperately Americans needed FDR, consider President Hoover’s explanation of the army of unemployed men selling apples on street corners during the depression. “They left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.” Seriously.
And this statistic: United States Steel, which employed 224,980 full-time workers in 1929, had not a single full-time worker on April 1, 1933.
FDR created not only employment with jobs programs, he created hope for a better day with his Fireside Chats.
Displaying 1 of 1 review