Another great new book on FDR’s New Deal
May 18, 2009 at 3:52 pm | Posted in David Taylor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Cheever, New Deal, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel | Leave a comment
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor.
Here’s my blurb: “This intimate portrait of the Writers’ Project, a gem of FDR’s New Deal, is a nostalgic journey through America in the Depression Era. Familiar faces dot every corner, young writers from Studs Terkel to Richard Wright, John Cheever to Ralph Ellison. It’s a journey well worth taking, a key formative moment in our literary common culture, well written and nicely researched.”
Books I’ve Blurbed
April 5, 2009 at 8:20 pm | Posted in Abe Reles, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Lachman, David Taylor, Edmund Elmaleh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Roy Morris Jr., Stephen Douglas, Studs Terkel | Leave a comment
Check out these recent titles, now in bookstores, that I had the pleasure to write advance blurbs for (which means, obviously, I liked them):
The Canary Sang but Couldn’t Fly: The Fatal Fall of Abe Reles, the Mobster Who Shattered Murder Inc.’s Code of Silence, by Edmund Elmaleh.
My blurb: “Elmaleh has brought fresh energy, a fresh point of view, and a flair for original research to this story, tracing its conspiracies in the best tradition of life mimicking film noir. This blank spot in New York’s underworld history deserves to be filled, and Elmaleh fills it.”
The Last Lincolns: The Rise and Fall of a Great American Family, by Charles Lachman.
My blurb: “[An] intimate portrait of decline. Throughout, the contrast between the great President and his descendants—living lives of little social impact or public purpose—is crystal clear.”
The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America, by Roy Morris, Jr.
My Blurb: “[A] key addition to out understanding of antebellum America — the forces driving the nation to th brink — and a fine human drama.”
Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor.
My blurb: “This intimate portrait of the Writers’ Project, a gem of FDR’s New Deal, is a nostalgic journey through America in the Depression Era. Familiar faces dot every corner, young writers from Studs Terkel to Richard Wright, John Cheever to Ralph Ellison. It’s a journey well worth taking, a key formative moment in our literary common culture, well written and nicely researched.”
A different view of FDR
February 21, 2009 at 2:56 pm | Posted in Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Woodrow Wilson | Leave a comment
To cap off President’s Week, I thought you might enjoy this rare photo of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, taken from the July 1920 Literary Digest.
Just 38 years old, two years before contracting polio, FDR is still the dashing young socialite, gracing Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet. We see him standing in front of one of his favorite cars, a Stutz roadster, holding a hunting rifle trying to mimick is famous Bull Moose Uncle Theodore.
Roosevelt that summer had used his celebrity name to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for Vice President on the ticket headed by Ohio Governor James Cox. They would lose in a landslide to Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coollidge.
There is an appealing innocence to this photo. Polio, the Depression, the strains in his marriage, the trials of returning to politics, restoring national confidence in tough times, facing Nazism and Facism in World War II — these things all were in the unknown future.
For now, we just see an easy-going young man on a sunny afternoon. Life was good.
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