Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780871407382)

A work that "deeply reconceptualizes the New Deal and raises countless provocative questions" (David Kennedy), Fear Itself changes the ground rules for our understanding of this pivotal era in American history. Ira Katznelson examines the New Deal through the lens of a pervasive, almost existential fear that gripped a world defined by the collapse of capitalism and the rise of competing dictatorships, as well as a fear created by the ruinous racial divisions in American society. Katznelson argues that American democracy was both saved and distorted by a Faustian collaboration that guarded racial segregation as it built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. Fear Itself charts the creation of the modern American state and "how a belief in the common good gave way to a central government dominated by interest-group politics and obsessed with national security" (Louis Menand, The New Yorker).

Author: Ira Katznelson
ISBN-10: 0871407388
ISBN-13: 9780871407382
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Language: English
Published: 03/17/2014
Pages: 720
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 8.35h x 5.50w x 1.26d

Review Citation(s):
New Yorker (The) 11/02/2015 pg. 90