Books in Brief

Majesty & Mischief: A Mixed Tribute to FDR, by William S. White (McGraw-Hill, $4.50). Assuming that history as we know it survives the unfolding, the consequences of FDR’s reign should one day be known and fairly set down. But some are impatient for the summing-up, despite the great unfinished business symbolized by Berlin. William S. White’s premature stab is delivered with characteristically even-handed style. In one convoluted sentence after another, FDR is, on the one hand, perhaps the greatest of Presidents and, on the other, perhaps the greatest of miscreants. But White, while avoiding the genuflections of knee-jerk Liberalism, doesn’t quite make it down his chosen middle-road. Like a whole generation of Americans, he cannot contemplate Roosevelt without reliving the trauma of the thirties. As much as the outcome of history, the definitive appraisal of FDR must await a chronicler who does not suppose that, because he and his countrymen came through, the New Deal therefore “saved” America and earned its architect eternal gratitude.

R. whalen

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Majesty & Mischief: A Mixed Tribute to FDR, by William S. White (McGraw-Hill, $4.50). Assuming that history as we know it survives the unfolding, the consequences of FDR’s reign should one day be known and fairly set down. But some are impatient for the summing-up, despite the great unfinished business symbolized by Berlin. William S. White’s premature stab is delivered with characteristically even-handed style. In one convoluted sentence after another, FDR is, on the one hand, perhaps the greatest of Presidents and, on the other, perhaps the greatest of miscreants. But White, while avoiding the genuflections of knee-jerk Liberalism, doesn’t quite make it down his chosen middle-road. Like a whole generation of Americans, he cannot contemplate Roosevelt without reliving the trauma of the thirties. As much as the outcome of history, the definitive appraisal of FDR must await a chronicler who does not suppose that, because he and his countrymen came through, the New Deal therefore “saved” America and earned its architect eternal gratitude.

R. whalen