Research Catalog

Title

The fireside conversations : America responds to FDR during the Great Depression / Lawrence W. Levine, Cornelia R. Levine ; foreword by Michael Kazin.

Author

Levine, Lawrence W.

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Levine, Cornelia R.

Description

xvi, 268 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

""My friends, I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking." So began the first of Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous Fireside Chats, which came on the heels of his decision, two days after his inauguration, to close all American banks. During this address, Roosevelt used the intimacy of radio to share his hopes and plans directly with the people. He concluded by encouraging Americans to "tell me your troubles." Roosevelt's invitation was unprecedented, and the enormous public response it elicited signaled the advent of a new relationship between Americans and their president. In this indispensable book, Lawrence W. Levine and Cornelia R. Levine illuminate the period from 1933 to 1938 by setting each of the Fireside Chats in context and reprinting a moving selection of the letters that poured into Washington from an extraordinary variety of ordinary Americans. In his foreword. Michael Kazin examines the achievements and limits of the New Deal and the reasons that FDR remains, for many Americans, the exemplar of a good president." ""Like FDR, Obama has mastered a new medium of political communication--the Internet instead of the radio. And in order to become a transformative president like Roosevelt, he will have to keep expressing his empathy with Americans in sincere and well-chosen words. This remarkable book demonstrates the power that one gifted voice can wield during a time of national calamity."--MICHAEL KAZIN, author of a Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" ""This work comprising these letters is revelatory, especially to the young, who have been denied their own history."--STUDS TERKEL" ""The Levines have restored Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats to their rightful place of importance in American history."--ROBERT DALLEK, author of Hail to the Chief"--BOOK JACKET.

Uniform Title

People and the president. Selections

Alternative Title

People and the president.

Subject

• Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1882-1945
• Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1882-1945 > Correspondence
• 1933-1945
• New Deal, 1933-1939
• New Deal, 1933-1939 > Sources
• Presidents > United States > Correspondence
• American letters
• conditions sociales > politique > 1938 > Etats-Unis > New Deal > 1933 > document
• communication politique > réception > radiodiffusion > Roosevelt, Franklin Delano > 1938 > Etats-Unis > New Deal > 1933 > correspondance
• United States > Politics and government > 1933-1945
• United States > Social conditions > 1933-1945
• United States > Politics and government > 1933-1945 > Sources
• United States > Social conditions > 1933-1945 > Sources

Genre/Form

• Records and correspondence
• Sources

Note

• Selected letters originally published in The people and the president, c2002 by Beacon Press.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-265).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

pt. 1. The nadir : 1933-1936. Closing the banks ; A New Deal ; The first hundred days ; "Relief, recovery, reform, and reconstruction" ; Order out of chaos ; Protecting the weak -- "An orderly economic democracy" -- pt. 2. The continuing crisis : 1937-1938. "Packing" the Supreme Court ; Balancing the "human budget" ; Combatting renewed Depression -- Epilogue.

ISBN

• 9780520265547 (alk. paper)
• 0520265548 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2010014862

OCLC

• 462906486
• SCSB-10999738

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library