"A provocative look at how modern America—created three-quarters of a century ago by the very Southern barons who were so important a part of the New Deal —was shaped. We think of history as a settled thing, tucked safely in a faraway past. This book is a reminder of how very surprising it can be."
Boston Globe - David Shribman
"Brilliant."
American Prospect - Scott Lemieux
…a powerful argument, swept along by Katznelson's robust prose and the imposing scholarship that lies behind it.
The New York Times Book Review - Kevin Boyle
…engrossing…It is an exhilarating pleasure to lose yourself in this old-fashioned example of original historical scholarship. Fear Itself is a sprawling, ambitious book that offers illuminating insights on nearly every page. Among Katznelson's gifts is the one most valuable to readers and most in danger of extinction in the American academy: He writes clear, energetic prose without a whiff of academic jargon or pretension.
The Washington Post - Robert G. Kaiser
Katznelson revivifies an often shop-worn subject in this new history of the New Deal. Rather than seeing FDR’s brainchild as simply a great experiment in economic recovery and the enlargement of government responsibility, Katznelson emphasizes three often neglected aspects of that extraordinary era—which, it’s worth noting, he dates from 1933 to 1952 (e.g., through Truman’s White House years). The first is the fear—of poverty, totalitarianism, and atomic warfare—that hung over those two decades. The second is the pressure that the examples of Nazi and Soviet regimes put on American politics. And the third is the “southern cage,” a “Faustian terrible compromise” that held American government and the New Deal itself in the grip of racialist and militarily assertive policies. Emphasizing the long New Deal, putting it in its global context, and shifting the focus from the White House to Congress makes this book a major revision of conventional interpretations. But it’s the extent of the permeating influence of Southern Democrats on national politics that is the work’s revelation—Katznelson rues the New Deal’s surrender to special interests at the expense of the public good. Overall, a critical and deeply scholarly work that, notwithstanding, is compulsively readable. 24 illus. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis Agency. (Mar.)
"Positing that the New Deal preserved liberal democracy, but at the expense of compromises with illiberal forces, Katznelson’s hefty history weighs other historians’ interpretations of the New Deal as it knowledgeably advances its own."
"In Fear Itself , Ira Katznelson has taken up an old subject and given it new life. In vivid prose, he reinterprets the causes and consequences of the New Deal and its aftermath, putting new emphasis on the role of Congress and southern legislators in the construction of domestic and foreign policy and the fighting of a world war and a cold war. His arguments are compelling, his documentation thorough. Fear Itself will, from this moment on, be the place to go for an understanding of the making of the New Deal and twentieth-century America."
"Fear Itself is a monumental history of the New Deal’s greatest paradox, its connections with the Jim Crow South. Combining historical nuance with his clear eye for the big picture, Ira Katznelson contributes one of the most trenchant accounts yet of American liberalism at the height of its power in the 1930s and 1940s—a book of major importance in understanding our own political distempers and opportunities."
"Engrossing… It is an exhilarating pleasure to lose yourself in this old-fashioned example of original historical scholarship. Fear Itself is a sprawling, ambitious book that offers illuminating insights on nearly every page. Among Katznelson’s gifts is the one most valuable to readers and most in danger of extinction in the American academy: He writes clear, energetic prose without a whiff of academic jargon or pretension… Entertaining and enlightening."
New Yorker - Louis Menand
"With Fear Itself , Ira Katznelson accomplishes something almost impossible—making us think in entirely new ways about the New Deal and its complex and contradictory legacy for modern America, and about the long legacy of slavery in our politics and society."
"Ira Katnelson’s Fear Itself is an extraordinary book that will change our understanding of the New Deal. He has shown the ways in which racism has shaped American life in the age of the Great Depression, and among other things he has brought the U.S. Congress to the front of the New Deal. It is a remarkable work of scholarship."
"In Fear Itself , Ira Katznelson has produced an excellent work of synthesis about the political and economic terms of the New Deal. It forms a bittersweet homage to the period he has long thought of as the pivotal moment in the development of both American democracy and the US national security state, founded on foreign and domestic policy designed around the “containment” of threats"…. His powerful and well-paced account begins in 1933 at the start of FDR’s extended presidency and ends with the inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower 20 years later"… anyone wanting an intelligent guide to the ideas that still shape its place in our own fractious times should begin by reading this book."
Financial Times - Duncan Kelly
"All of Fear Itself is suffused with the same sense of pure terror during the Roosevelt and Truman years as, say, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America . It’s easy to forget not just how dangerous the situation was, at home and abroad, during the New Deal, but how palpable were outcomes far worse than what we got…[Katznelson] has done something remarkable in Fear Itself in creating a large-scale, densely detailed tableau of the New Deal that feels fresh and unfamiliar."
New York Review of Books - Nicholas Lemann
"Fear Itself deeply reconceptualizes the New Deal and raises countless provocative questions."
"A powerful argument, swept along by Katznelson’s robust prose and the imposing scholarship that lies behind it."
"Engrossing… It is an exhilarating pleasure to lose yourself in this old-fashioned example of original historical scholarship. Fear Itself is a sprawling, ambitious book that offers illuminating insights on nearly every page. Among Katznelson’s gifts is the one most valuable to readers and most in danger of extinction in the American academy: He writes clear, energetic prose without a whiff of academic jargon or pretension… Entertaining and enlightening."
Katznelson (political science & history, Columbia Univ.; When Affirmative Action Was White) offers perhaps the most far-reaching and provocative treatment of the New Deal to date, carrying his impressively documented work well into the Truman presidency. He argues that faced with dire financial, political, and popular emergencies, which contributed to a national psychosis of fear, the New Deal’s architects were forced to navigate dangerous legislative and judicial shoals where personal freedoms and state control clashed. Katznelson reveals not just the New Deal’s reform achievements but the paradoxical costs (e.g., nonsupport of an antilynching bill) of preserving a broader-based liberal democracy and protecting its values. He persuasively connects FDR’s agenda to the Jim Crow South and a coterie of Dixie politicians who vigorously defended racial discrimination all the while bolstering Roosevelt’s efforts in rebuilding America’s economic vitality and extending her global influence. Through the author’s insightful domestic and international perspectives the reader grows to appreciate the two decades–long trials of a divided society, the intermittent dangers inherent in its laissez-faire capitalism, and the threats from competitive totalitarian regimes.
Verdict A significant contribution to New Deal historiography and, more important, a useful guide to a better understanding of our present-day societal and political discordance. Highly recommended.—John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Cleveland
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A wholly new approach to the New Deal takes history we thought we knew and makes it even richer and more complex. In this deeply erudite, beautifully written history, Katznelson (Political Science and History/Columbia Univ.; When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America , 2005, etc.) adopts an expansive view of the New Deal, extending it to the end of the Truman administration. He reminds us that, while anxieties and apprehensions attend every age, FDR assumed office at a time when a profound, abiding fear predominated: about the very survival of liberal democracy in the face of economic meltdown and competition from fascist and communist dictatorships abroad. The dread persisted through a brutal world war, the dawn of the Atomic Age and the beginning of the Cold War. By the time of Eisenhower's inauguration, a vastly different state had emerged, and its architecture would remain largely undisturbed by the first Republican president in 20 years. Katznelson distinguishes his history in two other important ways. First, in keeping with his theme about the survival of representative democracy, he places special emphasis on the role of Congress in helping to forge the policies and programs that came to define the era. Second, he is cold-eyed about the dicey compromises the New Deal made domestically with the legislature's dominant force, the Jim Crow South, and internationally by associations with totalitarian governments. An especially fine chapter illustrates the nature of these disturbing alliances by resuscitating the now almost forgotten stories of Italy's intrepid aviator Italo Balbo, the Soviet Union's Nuremberg judge Iona Nikitchenko and Mississippi's racist senator Theodore Bilbo. Although he sees the New Deal as "a rejuvenating triumph," the author unflinchingly assesses its many dubious, albeit necessary concessions. Some will quarrel with aspects of Katznelson's analysis, few with his widely allusive, elegant prose.
