The Roosevelt Revolution

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. The format is approximately 5.625 inches by 8.5 inches. x, [2], 372 pages. Footnotes. Index. The DJ has Spine scuff, wear and soiling and is price-clipped. Ink notation on the fep. A bold study of the New Deal from the viewpoint of Europe and American by the Goldwin Smith Professor of Government at Cornell University. Among the topics covered are Europe's Image of America, The Great Depression, Roosevelt, New Tools for the New State, Electricity and Freedom, The Supreme Court and the Constitution, The Meaning of Freedom and Equality, The New Landscape of American Society: Lights and Shadows, and Reflections on Tocqueville. Mario Einaudi was born in 1904 in one of the most influential family in Italy. His father, Luigi Einaudi, was one of Italy's great economic thinkers and became the second President of the Republic of Italy. After graduation from Turin with a dissertation on Edmund Burke, Einaudi spent two years at the London School of Economics, working with William Beveridge and Harold Laski. He worked for the Office of War Information and the Council on Foreign Relations and began to teach future Allied Military Government personnel about European government once a week at Cornell University. Three central tenets to Einaudi's work were: that the study of politics must be embedded in history; that Europe and the United States have much to teach each other about the practice of democratic politics; and that the classics of political theory must inform the study of contemporary democratic states. These themes were best embodied in his 1959 book, The Roosevelt Revolution. Derived from a Kirkus review: A provocative analysis of the contributions made by the New Deal to the American scene, this view by a European- now professor of government at Cornell- should open not only European eyes, but American eyes, to the long range view. To many his analysis of the myth of America still characteristic of much European thinking, and the assumption that the twenty years of the Roosevelt Revolution are thrown overboard now, will come as a shock. The more radical the changes in American life, the more difficult of European acceptance. The European intellectual worries over the absence of an American Left and have never really understood the Depression crisis years, while they keep alive their concepts of the extremes economically and the sad condition of freedom. The purpose of this book is to show in what measure and how well have the policies and beliefs launched in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations been realized today. The Great Depression ended in the revolution of men with ideas, F.D.R. the spearhead and driving force; the test of democratic leadership is to be found in the sum total of effective achievements secured in a climate of freedom. Many of the factors he presents with new and fresh understanding:- the Supreme Court furor; the TVA; the new restrictions on Wall Street, on Holding Companies; the change in the tax picture; the issues of freedom and equality; the welfare of man; the new goals in business; the interrelation of trade unionism and the corporations; the non-political behavior of American Labor; the vindication of American institutions; the political parties; America and Communism; and the current danger of a state of mind in the trend to conformism. In conclusion he states: "The Roosevelt Revolution having brought together common action and individual liberty has preserved that freedom." And he sees the era of the New Deal as America's coming of age. In this thoughtful reassessment Mario Einaudi has challenged Americans to review their own position. A book that may well stand beside Tocqueville's Democracy in America.