The End Of Reform : New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War

Rating:
Summary: Insightful Analysis of Roosevelt's Men
Review: Brinkley successfully blends away the mask of a liberalist approach to the New Deal in this work. He chronicles in insightful detail the various alphabet soup programs and their roles in the Roosevelt administration. Yet, his main focus is the continued deintensification of liberalism in subsequent administrations and the nature of liberals and their movement from anti-big business and pro-worker to less hostile to big business as many liberals moved from one side to the other. Brinkley follows his discussion of New Deal liberalism with a discussion of the progressive degeneration of liberalism in the age of Truman and Eisenhower and subsequent efforts to foster some kind of rebirth in that time period. In sum, Brinkley's work is rather exceptional. He covers the material without tipping the reader off as to his liberal nature.

Rating:
Summary: Lucid
Review: From the changes in assumptions of economists to the conception of today's miltary-industrial complex, Alan Brinkley explains in this one volume clearly and concisely what so many other authors of multi-volume tomes try but never quite put their thumb on.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, gets borning after the beginning of WW II
Review: Too often the New Deal is portrayed as one coherent plan FDR and his administration had for getting the United States out of the depression. The End of Reform is a wonderful correction of this historical myth. Not only did FDR and his advisors have no set plan going in, much of what was accomplished reprisented compromises and backroom political dealing. Brinkley most interestingly details the indecision and political rangling in the FDR White House and with Congress after the beginning of the 1937 recession. Brinkley proves that really FDR didn't know what to do after the beginning of the recession and also after his National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional. He also conclusively proves that much of the 1937 recession can be attributed to FDR's agreement with conservative Democrats to balance the budget which resulted in many cuts in social spending.
Also an interesting aspect not discussed in many other books concerns FDR's response to domestic issues after Pearl Harbor. After the beginning of WW II FDR all but ignored domestic issues, largely sitting silent as Congress rolled back many pre-war New Deal reforms. His discussion of the attitude of many people inside the adminsitration wanting to turn to more of a socialist economy with Federal intervention is also quite good.
With so many high school history courses and textbooks portraying the New Deal as a coherent plan that FDR and his advisors knew would bring the US out of the depression.