Hope Restored

In the suffering and poverty of the Great Depression, American morale received a shock as powerful as the economic collapse. Many Americans who had nurtured a deep faith in democracy, hard work, and a free economy suddenly found themselves questioning their system. Others feared that in combating the Depression, democracy might give way to the totalitarianism of the left or right. In Hope Restored, Bernard Sternsher has assembled fourteen writings by historians that show how, even though the New Deal’s initiatives did not always work, FDR’s program was a psychological and political success. It restored hope to a battered nation. Mr. Sternsher’s focus is not on Washington, D.C., but on what was happening at the local level across a vast and diverse nation—how people responded in Providence and Atlanta, Minneapolis and Hermosa Beach. These snapshots provide a much different composite portrait of the nation than an exclusively “top-down” view. They reveal the influence of local politics on the success of New Deal measures; the often surprising relations between various levels of governmental administration; the disregard for matters of ideology; and the varieties of experience under the New Deal. Like Mr. Stersher’s earlier book, Hitting Home: The Great Depression in Town and Country, this one describes the workings of the New Deal on a scale we can all comprehend.