Review by Booklist Review
In the vein of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals (2005), political historian Leebaert illuminates the dynamics of FDR's consequential administration by focusing on four of his lieutenants: Harry Lloyd Hopkins, who supervised several relief organizations, including the Works Progress Administration; Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interi Frances Perkins, Secretary of Lab and Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture. The quartet, like Roosevelt, was characterized by triumph over adversity, which Leebaert illustrates by fleshing out their individual backgrounds. He also highlights their cultivation of professional networks and their ability, like FDR himself, to marshal talent. All four were adept at managing the chaos of the administration, including budget gymnastics, the creation of massive public works programs, and the onset of WWII. Leebaert notes that these lieutenants had the types of positions that garnered enemies and a certain amount of fearlessness was essential to success. Perkins, for her part, opened "entire sectors to women." Leebaert sheds new light on FDR's managerial capabilities and ably demonstrates that the cultivation of diversified and resilient talent was essential to the administration's endurance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Franklin Roosevelt came to the White House backed by a coterie of loyal and talented advisers who played critical roles in navigating the Great Depression and WWII, according to this laudatory group biography from historian Leebaert (Grand Improvisation). At the center of the history are Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who professionalized a corrupt bureaucracy and spearheaded immigration reforms; Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, who kept the New Deal on track and desegregated his department's Washington, D.C., headquarters on his first day in office; Henry Wallace, who became FDR's vice president after steering the Agriculture Department through a roster of farming reforms; and Harry Hopkins, who served as a freelance wartime envoy to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Throughout, Leebaert highlights how the quartet's personal travails--including bad marriages, sexual indiscretions, and poor health--made them kindred spirits and nonjudgmental counselors to Roosevelt. Still, it wasn't all peaches and cream--Leebaert reports that Hopkins once floated the idea of ousting Perkins, while FDR "tilted the weight of his influence" to oust Wallace from the vice presidency at the 1944 Democratic National Convention and replace him with Harry Truman. Though the prose occasionally plods, Leebaert thoroughly mines diaries, letters, and oral histories to deliver a fine-grained study of the ties that bound this consequential administration. It's an enlightening investigation into the alchemy of successful governance. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Leebaert (Magic and Mayhem) follows four protagonists from President Franklin Roosevelt's inner circle during the Depression. These four are Federal Emergency Relief Administrator Harry Hopkins, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, the able and visionary Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, and the agricultural scientist Henry Wallace. Leebaert discusses the tumultuous personality of Ickes, the sickly but determined Hopkins, the experienced social activist Perkins, and the scientific imagination of Wallace. Readers discover the various backgrounds that contributed to this New Deal team, including Perkins's fight for child labor reform and Hopkins's work with the New York Tuberculosis Association. The book also details the depression, divorce, financial woes, and alcoholism that struck some within this productive, yet very human cohort. The crippling effects of the Depression, ranging from malnourishment in New York City to the plight of drought-stricken Oklahoma farmers, is well presented, along with descriptions of issues such as child labor, dangerous factory conditions, widespread malnourishment, and violent raids on immigrant communities. VERDICT An intimate portrait of FDR's inner circle during the New Deal. Readers of U.S. history, economics, and political science should greatly enjoy this volume.--Jeffrey Meyer
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A deep examination of the four figures who were central to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. As a political leader, Roosevelt played his cards close to his chest and never forgot a slight, however minor. Three men and one woman served him well in this stance, forming a kind of Cabinet within a Cabinet. Indeed, FDR's official Cabinet was often hapless in selling the administration's ambitious programs: "Attorney General Cummings had no wish to campaign because he was eyeing a Senate-confirmed appointment to the Supreme Court. Secretary of State Hull didn't like making speeches, and made them ponderously anyway, while Commerce Secretary Roper had faded into invisibility. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, according to Farley, was too nervous to use in any capacity." As Leebaert--founding editor of International Security and author of Grand Improvisation and Magic and Mayhem--demonstrates, that left Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Henry Wallace, and Frances Perkins to do the work. All were staggeringly intelligent, and most were flawed in surprising ways: Ickes once "seduced his stepdaughter," Perkins was a melancholic married to a husband haunted by bipolar disorder, and Wallace harbored a desire to be president himself. When Roosevelt took power at the height of the Great Depression, he "identified the large established government departments that he believed vital to recovery: Agriculture, Interior, Labor, and Treasury." Not surprisingly, the four stalwarts took leadership and, in one way or another, helped bring about recovery. Without stretching the point to hyperbole, Leebaert is good at adducing current themes in past history, including regional divisions, racism, inequality, trickle-down economics, and a politicized and obstructionist Supreme Court. Interestingly, thanks largely to Wallace and Perkins, FDR paid close attention to rural America, a lesson Democrats might learn today, and to battling segregation by, among other things, refusing government contracts to companies that engaged in discrimination. A nuanced study of reformist government in action and its behind-the-scenes players. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
