Book Review: Americans in a World at War

Reply

Review by Victoria Wolcott

Blower, Brooke L., Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan
Am’s Yankee Clipper, Oxford University Press

Publication Date: August 29, 2023

Blower’s masterfully researched book, Americans in a World at War, tells the story of the New
Deal and World War II in original and surprising ways. Through the lens of the 1943 crash of
Pan American Airway’s Yankee Clipper Blower illustrates the important roles that
noncombatants played in the war. Tracing the biographies of the Clipper’s passengers back in
time Blower uncovers seldom-told stories of Broadway stars, savvy entrepreneurs,
swashbuckling pilots, and skilled diplomats in the 1930s and early 1940s. And despite the United
States’ isolationism in the decade prior to Pearl Harbor, she demonstrated the global connections
that linked her historical actors to a network of internationalists. Finally, while grounded in the
historiography of the period as well as extensive archival research, Blower tells a riveting tail
bringing her readers along for the ride on the Yankee Clipper.

Book Review: A New Deal for Quilts

Reply

Review by Scott Borchert

Janneken Smucker’s A New Deal for Quilts, University of Nebraska Press

Publication Date: December 2023

Janneken Smucker’s A New Deal for Quilts poses a question few might think to ask: what would happen if you organized a study of the New Deal and the Great Depression entirely around the theme of quilts and quilting? This illuminating, surprising, and beautifully designed book is the answer. With skill and nuance, Smucker explores how, during the Depression era, quilts became tangled up with ideas and myths about the American past—even while they became central, as material objects, to a variety of New Deal programs. She takes us into the WPA sewing rooms and FSA home economics classes where women produced quilts as part of a broader work-relief strategy, and she introduces us to the government photographers, oral historians, and artists who documented quilts as vital historical artifacts. She focuses, too, on the thorny interplay between federal agencies, politicians, and the public, by examining some memorable examples of quilts as thread-and-fabric expressions of political commitments and aspirations. A New Deal for Quilts offers a fresh perspective on how policies designed to combat the Great Depression shaped the daily lives of ordinary Americans—especially women—and how, in turn, domestic practices such as quilting influenced those very policies. Smucker’s clear prose and expert knowledge, combined with the book’s sumptuous visual design—featuring many striking black and white photographs from the 1930s alongside full color images of the quilts themselves—make this an exceptional contribution to the study of the New Deal.A New Deal for Quilts

LND Featured on NPR’s Marketplace: The New Deal’s Legacy

1

The Living New Deal was featured on National Public Radio’s Marketplace. Natalie McDonald, Living New Deal Research Assistant, spoke about the built legacy of the New Deal and the work of the Living New Deal does to document this era. The podcast examined how the New Deal changed the relationship between the government and the economy. If before the New Deal there was “the government and the economy,” after the New Deal, we had “the government in the economy.” Listen to the segment here.

A NEW LOOK FOR LIVINGNEWDEAL.ORG

Reply

The livingnewdeal.org website has been transformed, the culmination of two years of planning, design, programming and feedback. The new design is receiving rave reviews for its sleek and roomy look and ease of use— navigating via buttons rather than menus and scrolling. An additional benefit is the greater ease of searching New Deal sites through the database and map. The improvements also make it easier to use the site on laptops and phones. Our immense thanks to webmaster Lisa Thompson and programmer Tod Abbott, and to Dick Walker for design input and to team members, advisors and associates for feedback.

NEW DEAL BOOK AWARD FOR 2022

Reply

The Living New Deal presented our second Annual New Deal Book Award to Victoria Wolcott (University of Buffalo). The award ceremony took place at the Roosevelt Reading Festival at FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY. LND team members Gray Brechin and Jeff Gold attended the event. Professor Wolcott discussed her book, Living in the Future, Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, (University of Chicago Press-2022). Living in the Future reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement. A LND webinar featured Dr. Wolcott in dialogue with Professor Kimberly Johnson (New York University). Dr. Johnson, a member of the Living New Deal Research Board, is the new chair of the New Deal Book Award selection committee for books published in 2023. Many thanks to Professor Eric Rauchway (University of California, Davis) for leading the committee over the past two years.

NEW YORK CHAPTER UPDATE

Reply

Our New York City Chapter led a New Deal tour of Central Park in May and presented a very impressive webinar on Social Security in June. They partnered with Roosevelt House at Hunter College on two other webinars, one in March on transforming the nation’s food system and another in October on New Deal-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. They also joined in the commemoration at the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company near Manhattan’s Washington Square, where a tragic fire in 1915 sparked Perkins’s lifelong dedication to aiding women and other workers.

NEW DEAL 90TH ANNIVERSARY EVENTS

Reply

 Led by Susan Ives, the Living New Deal produced two impressive events celebrating the 90th anniversary of the New Deal. The first was held at Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, California, where the Civilian Conservation Corps did extensive work during the New Deal. Our partner, the National Park Service, showed the work currently underway to restore  Coho salmon habitat and upgrade historic trails in this renowned redwood park.  

More than a hundred guests attended a New Deal anniversary celebration at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. The museum, built by the WPA, features recently restored murals, mosaics and sculptures commissioned under the Federal Art Project.

Historian and political commentator Heather Cox Richardson was the keynoter who, along with Judge Charles Breyer, LND’s founder Gray Brechin, and the San Francisco historian and author Gary Kamiya, recalled the impact of the New Deal and its relevance today. Aaron Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, presented a Proclamation to the Living New Deal on behalf of the City. Our thanks to our partners, the San Francisco Maritime Historical National Park Association, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the National Park Service, which provided hourly tours of the building’s architecture and artworks throughout the day. Greenbelt, Maryland and Roosevelt University in Chicago also hosted events honoring the New Deal’s 90th anniversary.

View photos of the San Francisco Maritime Museum event.

IN OTHER NEWS

Reply

Our Northwest Coordinator Judith Kenny produced the second video in a planned series, “Mapping New Deal Oregon,” funded by the Kinsman Foundation. The CCC’s Legacy at Eagle Creek Recreation Area does a fine job of showing off the popular park and its New Deal legacy.

In Los Angeles, Research Assistant Natalie McDonald was selected by the American Historical Association as the AHA Summer Columnist, reporting on aspects of New Deal history in the LA area.  Our Social Media Director Sophia Gimenez has been catching the public eye with a well-planned series of posts about LND activities and news.

Living New Deal founder and Project Scholar Gray Brechin continues to keep a busy speaking schedule. In addition to his talks around the Bay Area, Gray recently did a radio interview with writer David Kipen about the New Deal in Los Angeles.

LND Director Dick Walker gave an in-person talk to a conference of park rangers on the New Deal in California parks and several virtual talks for audiences in the Bay Area, Washington DC and Los Angeles, as well as interviews for podcasts and newspapers.

PAUL GROTH BEQUEST

Reply

The late Professor Paul Groth (UC Berkeley Department of Geography) left the Living New Deal a substantial bequest that came to us in 2023. Paul was a nationally known expert on American landscapes and a great admirer of the New Deal’s contribution to the people and places of the country, as well as an old friend of former colleagues Dick Walker and Gray Brechin. A wonderful online tribute to Paul by his many friends was published before he died so that he could see how well loved he was.

To learn more about bequests, contact Kurt Feichtmeir at [email protected].

MILLIONS OF VIEWS!

Reply

The Living New Deal is attracting more eyes than ever. In November we were featured on the PBS Newshour, which boosted our website to a record 4 million views last year. According to web analytics company, Cloudfare, this puts us in the top twenty-five percent of all the websites they follow. The biggest attractions to our website are our national online map and New Deal program summaries, which are heavily used by history teachers and students. We expect another big bump in traffic to our site once our rebuild is complete. Webmaster Lisa Thompson and her team have been working furiously over the last two years to make the website more secure, user friendly, and beautiful. We’re tying up hundreds of loose ends, but expect to roll out the new site in a matter of weeks.