The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945: A Brief History with Documents

The era of Franklin D.Roosevelt and the New Deal was a time of depression and despair, economic rebirth and renewal, and mobilization for a war in both the East and the West. Richard Polenberg's introduction to this new volume provides an engaging historical and biographical overview of the period by focusing on one of its key actors. The biographical introduction is followed by over 45 topically arranged primary sources that provide students with a rich context in which to understand FDR's multifaceted role as president, reformer, policymaker, and commander-in-chief. The readings thoroughly cover issues of race and ethnicity, profile First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and explore the New Deal's transformative agencies for their economic and social ramifications and the constitutional revolution they triggered. A chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index are also provided.

RICHARD POLENBERG is professor of history at Cornell University, where he has received the Clark Distinguished Teaching Award and was appointed Goldwin Smith Professor of American History in 1986. He has been a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has published widely on twentieth-century American history, including The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process (1997), Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (1989), for which he won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award and the Gustavus Myers Foundation's Outstanding Book Award; and One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (1980).