The People and the President: America's Extraordinary Conversation with FDR
FDR delivered a total of 31 "Fireside Chat" radio addresses during his presidency, the first just one week after taking office in 1933. At the end of each chat, he invited his listeners to write and tell him their concerns. McArthur Award-winning historian Lawrence Levine (The Opening of the American Mind) and his wife, Cornelia, an independent scholar, here assemble a representative sample of the American people's responses, arranged chronologically through 1945. Set into historical context by the Levines, the letters range from the engaging to the banal. Of course, the critical correspondence (of which there is plenty) makes for far more interesting reading than do the fawning letters of approval, of which there are also plenty. "I would feel more confident if you didn't have so many smart alex young Jews and Irish around you," wrote a farmer in 1940. "I am amazed that after the `pump priming' you have already poured into the Country you should have nothing better to offer than a repetition..." wrote a North Carolina conservative in '38. And then we have this, from 1942: "When you talk so glibly of drafting our... boys, it is absolute proof that you are war-mad." Perhaps a few of these missives, such as the several bearing asinine poems written to honor the president, should have been left to decay in the files of the FDR Library. Overall, however, the letters comprised variously of love, spite, wit and bigotry combine to offer a new and intriguing lens through which to view FDR and his America. 6 b&w; photos not seen by PW.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.