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One of the most controversial figures of the New Deal Era, Harry Hopkins elicited few neutral responses from his contemporaries. Millions admired him and believed the New Deal agencies he headed had rescued them from despair, but many of President Roosevelt’s enemies passionately hated him and derisively called him the “world’s greatest spender” or FDR’s “left-wing Rasputin.” Hopkins was a paradoxical man: a trained social worker who enjoyed the company of the “swells,” attending cocktail parties, and gambling at the track. Once the quintessential New Dealer, during World War II he single-mindedly devoted himself to aiding the allies, downplaying his previous commitment to social reform and rupturing his friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. He was sickly and underweight, yet a profane and blunt-spoken man, lacking in any outward affectations of charisma. Still, FDR curiously saw Hopkins, who moved into the White House on the very day that Germany invaded France in May 1940, as his most suitable successor, the New Deal’s legatee, and a possible Democratic nominee for president. Much of what FDR accomplished would never have been possible without Hopkins—whom the press described as not only FDR’s most trusted official, but also his most intimate personal friend. Analyzing Hopkins’ role in wartime diplomacy and his personal relationships with the twentieth-century’s most indispensable leaders, historian Christopher O’Sullivan offers enormous insight into the most controversial aspects of FDR’s foreign policy, the New Deal Era, and the beginning of modern American history.
Born in Iowa, Harry Lloyd Hopkins (1890-1946) graduated from Grinnell College and took a job at Christadora House, a social settlement house, in New York City where he later worked in the Bureau of Child Welfare and the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), before President Roosevelt asked him to run the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he built into the largest employer in the US. Hopkins was Secretary of Commerce from 1938 until 1940. From 1940 until 1943, he lived and worked in the White House. He enjoyed close relationships with FDR and with Eleanor Roosevelt. During World War II, he oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as FDR’s personal envoy to Churchill and Stalin, had a key role in shaping Allied military strategy. Hopkins was considered a potential successor to FDR as President until the late 1930s, when his health began to decline due to a long-running battle with stomach cancer. He died at the age of 55. “The author is the first since Robert Sherwood... to complete a full biography of Harry Hopkins. He has added significant detail, based on new sources, while confirming Sherwood’s portrait of a brave and loyal aide who ranked with George Marshall in his contribution to victory in World War II. The three most influential foreign policy advisers to Presidents in this century were Colonel House for Wilson, Hopkins, and Henry A. Kissinger. Hopkins was more loyal than House, less innovative than Kissinger, but equal to both in his ability to get things done. He died in 1946, exhausted and in debt.” — Gaddis Smith, Foreign Affairs “[A] fascinating, well-written book... Hopkins’s influence on national social welfare policy developments lasted only a relatively short time, from 1932 to 1938 when he was appointed Secretary of Commerce. Then the events that were to lead to World War II were shaping up, and Roosevelt chose Hopkins to serve as his personal ambassador. That part of the story is completely absorbing, and the reader will find it well worth his time as general history and intimate biography.” — F. R. B., Social Service Review “This first detailed biography of Harry Hopkins is essential reading to one interested in the domestic and foreign policies of Franklin Roosevelt. Hopkins was closer and had a greater impact on Roosevelt during his presidency than any other single individual. The book is well-written, interesting, and thoroughly documented... [Hopkins’] role as head of the Works Progress Administration is skillfully outlined. The importance of his work during World War II in acting as Roosevelt’s liaison with both Churchill and Stalin cannot be underestimated... Despite the obviously important matters of substance in which Hopkins was involved, the book does not neglect his personal life, domestic problems, and poor health. He comes through it all as a very interesting individual with whom one would have enjoyed working.” — Victor B. Levit, American Bar Association Journal
Jewish First Wife, Divorced collects the correspondence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Relief Administrator, Harry Hopkins, and his Jewish first wife, Ethel Gross. These letters--flirtatious and fond, quietly argumentative and terse--reveal the significant influence of Progressivism on Harry Hopkins's political ideology and also the unique challenges for a professionally ambitious Jewish immigrant woman living in the early twentieth century.
From 1912 to 1940, social worker Harry Hopkins committed himself to the ideal of government responsibility for impoverished Americans. This look at Hopkins' life and social work career broadens our understanding of the political and cultural currents that led to the Social Security Act of 1935, the bedrock of the American welfare state. Hopkins' experiences as an advocate and administrator of work relief and widows' pensions in New York City during the Progressive Era informed his contribution to welfare legislation during the New Deal years. Written by his granddaughter June Hopkins, this book not only clarifies the emergence of welfare policy but sheds considerable light on the present welfare debate. It also illuminates the life of one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.
From first to last the New Deal was a work in progress, a patchwork of often contradictory ideas.
Between 1933 and 1935, Lorena Hickok traveled across thirty-two states as a "confidential investigator" for Harry Hopkins, head of FDR's Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Her assignment was to gather information about the day-to-day toll the Depression was exacting on individual citizens. One Third of a Nation is her record, underscored by the eloquent photographs of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, of the shocking plight of millions of unemployed and dispossessed Americans.
It's January 1941, and the Blitz is devastating England. Food supplies are low, Tube stations in London have become bomb shelters, and U-boats have hampered any hope of easy victory. Though the United States maintains its isolationist position, Churchill knows that England is finished without the aid of its powerful ally. Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's most trusted adviser, is sent to London as his emissary, and there he falls under the spell of Churchill's commanding rhetoric---and legendary drinking habits. As he experiences life in a country under attack, Hopkins questions the United States' silence in the war. But back home FDR is paranoid about the isolationist lobby, and even Hopkins is having trouble convincing him to support the war. As Hopkins grapples with his mission and personal loyalties, he also revels in secret clubs with newsman Edward R. Murrow and has an affair with his younger driver. Except Hopkins doesn't know that his driver is a British intelligence agent. She craves wartime action and will go to any lengths to prove she should be on the front line. This is London under fire, and it's only when the night descends and the bombs fall that people's inner darkness comes to light. In Sleep in Peace Tonight, a tale of courage, loyalty, and love, and the sacrifices one will make in the name of each, James MacManus brings to life not only Blitz-era London and the tortuous politics of the White House but also the poignant characters and personalities that shaped the course of world history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.
Providing the first historical study of New Deal public works programs and their role in transforming the American economy, landscape, and political system during the twentieth century. Reconstructing the story of how reformers used public authority to reshape the nation, Jason Scott Smith argues that the New Deal produced a revolution in state-sponsored economic development. The scale and scope of this dramatic federal investment in infrastructure laid crucial foundations - sometimes literally - for postwar growth, presaging the national highways and the military-industrial complex. This impressive and exhaustively researched analysis underscores the importance of the New Deal in comprehending political and economic change in modern America by placing political economy at the center of the 'new political history'. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, Smith provides a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the relationship between the New Deal's welfare state and American liberalism.