Nominations for the 2023 New Deal Book Award are now being accepted. Information about submitting nominations for the award can be found here.
In 2021, the Living New Deal established the New Deal Book Award to recognize and encourage nonfiction works about the New Deal era, 1933-1942, the remarkable decade between the nadir of the Great Depression and U.S.’s entry into World War II.
The Award review committee is chaired by Kimberley Johnson, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, and author of Reforming Jim Crow and Governing the American State.
The 2023 Award, with a prize of $1,000, will be presented at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum’s Roosevelt Reading Festival in Hyde Park, New York in summer 2024.
2022 Book Award Winner
The winner of the 2022 Award is Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, for her book Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, (University of Chicago Press, Publication, 2022), which reveals the impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement.
Victoria W. Wolcott, Photo credit: Yves-Richard Blanc
The Award review committee, described Wolcott’s book as “a profound and engaging study of interracial cooperative communities that experimented with new ways of life in the years of the Depression and New Deal. These communities’ members were shaped, for better and worse, by New Deal policies, and shaped them in turn, particularly through the Department of Agriculture. Their vision of new and better ways to live laid the foundations for the postwar Civil Rights movement.”
The $1,000 award will be presented at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum’s Roosevelt Reading Festival in Hyde Park, New York on June 24, 2023.
Synopsis: Utopian thinking is often dismissed as unrealistic, overly idealized, and flat-out impractical—in short, wholly divorced from the urgent conditions of daily life. This is perhaps especially true when the utopian ideal in question is reforming and repairing the United States’ bitter history of racial injustice. But as Wolcott provocatively argues, utopianism is actually the foundation of a rich and visionary worldview, one that specifically inspired the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement in ways that haven’t yet been fully understood or appreciated. Those leaders all shared a belief in a radical pacificism that was both specifically utopian and deeply engaged in changing the current conditions of the existing world.
Anthony J. Badger, Why White Liberals Fail: Race and Southern Politics from FDR to Trump, Harvard University Press, Publication Date: June 14, 2022
From FDR to Clinton, charismatic Democratic leaders have promised a New South—a model of social equality and economic opportunity that is always just around the corner. So how did the region become the stronghold of conservative Republicans in thrall to Donald Trump?
After a lifetime studying Southern politics, Anthony Badger has come to a provocative conclusion: white liberals failed because they put their faith in policy solutions as an engine for social change and were reluctant to confront directly the explosive racial politics dividing their constituents. After World War II, many Americans believed that if the edifice of racial segregation, white supremacy, and voter disfranchisement could be dismantled across the South, the forces of liberalism would prevail. Hopeful that economic modernization and education would bring about gradual racial change, Southern moderates were rattled when civil rights protest and federal intervention forced their hand. Most were fatalistic in the face of massive resistance. When the end of segregation became inevitable, it was largely driven by activists and mediated by Republican businessmen. Badger follows the senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto and rejected Nixon’s Southern Strategy. He considers the dilemmas liberals faced across the South, arguing that their failure cannot be blamed simply on entrenched racism. Conservative triumph was not inevitable, he argues, before pointing to specific false steps and missed opportunities. Could the biracial coalition of low-income voters that liberal politicians keep counting on finally materialize? Badger sees hope but urges Democrats not to be too complacent.
The New Deal and American Society, 1933–1941 explores what some have labeled the third American revolution, in one concise and accessible volume. This book examines the emergence of modern America, beginning with the 100 Days legislation in 1933 through to the second New Deal era that began in 1935. This revolutionary period introduced sweeping social and economic legislation designed to provide the American people with a sense of hope while at the same time creating regulations designed to safeguard against future depressions. It was not without critics or failures, but even these proved significant in the ongoing discussions concerning the idea of federal power, social inclusion, and civil rights. Uncertainties concerning aggressive, nationalistic states like Italy, Germany, and Japan shifted the focus of FDR’s administration, but the events of World War II solidified the ideas and policies begun during the 1930s, especially as they related to the welfare state. The legacy of the New Deal would resonate well into the current century through programs like Social Security, unemployment compensation, workers’ rights, and the belief that the federal government is responsible for the economic well-being of its citizenry. The volume includes many primary documents to help situate students and bring this era to life. The text will be of interest to students of American history, economic and social history, and, more broadly, courses that engage social change and economic upheaval.
Jonathan Darman, Becoming FDR, Penguin/Random House, Publication Date: September 6, 2022
In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically.
In popular memory, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the quintessential political “natural.” Born in 1882 to a wealthy, influential family and blessed with an abundance of charm and charisma, he seemed destined for high office. Yet for all his gifts, the young Roosevelt nonetheless lacked depth, empathy, and an ability to think strategically. Those qualities, so essential to his success as president, were skills he acquired during his seven-year journey through illness and recovery. Becoming FDR traces the riveting story of the struggle that forged Roosevelt’s character and political ascent. Soon after contracting polio in 1921 at the age of thirty-nine, the former failed vice-presidential candidate was left paralyzed from the waist down. He spent much of the next decade trying to rehabilitate his body and adapt to the stark new reality of his life. By the time he reemerged on the national stage in 1928 as the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, his character and his abilities had been transformed. He had become compassionate, and shrewd by necessity, tailoring his speeches to inspire listeners and to reach them through a new medium—radio. Suffering cemented his bond with those he once famously called “the forgotten man.” Most crucially, he had discovered how to find hope in a seemingly hopeless situation—a belief that he employed to motivate Americans through the Great Depression and World War II. The polio years were transformative too for the marriage of Franklin and Eleanor, and for Eleanor herself, who became, at first reluctantly, her husband’s surrogate at public events, and who grew to become a political and humanitarian force in her own right. Tracing the physical, political, and personal evolution of the iconic president, Becoming FDR shows how adversity can lead to greatness, and to the power to remake the world.
Matthew F. Delmont, Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Viking/Penguin, Publication Date: October 18, 2022
The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont.
The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” Half American is American history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; James Thompson, the 26-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign; and poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.
Hugh Eakin, Picasso’s War,Crown, Penguin Random House, Publication Date: July 12, 2022
A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world—and Picasso the most famous artist alive—in the shadow of World War II.
A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world—and Picasso the most famous artist alive—in the shadow of World War II. In January 1939, Pablo Picasso was renowned in Europe but disdained by many in the United States. One year later, Americans across the country were clamoring to see his art. How did the controversial leader of the Paris avant-garde break through to the heart of American culture? The answer begins a generation earlier, when a renegade Irish American lawyer named John Quinn set out to build the greatest collection of Picassos in existence. His dream of a museum to house them died with him, until it was rediscovered by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., a cultural visionary who, at the age of twenty-seven, became the director of New York’s new Museum of Modern Art. Barr and Quinn’s shared goal would be thwarted in the years to come—by popular hostility, by the Depression, by Parisian intrigues, and by Picasso himself. It would take Hitler’s campaign against Jews and modern art, and Barr’s fraught alliance with Paul Rosenberg, Picasso’s persecuted dealer, to get Picasso’s most important paintings out of Europe. Mounted in the shadow of war, the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art would launch Picasso in America, define MoMA as we know it, and shift the focus of the art world from Paris to New York. Picasso’s War is the never-before-told story about how a single exhibition, a decade in the making, irrevocably changed American taste, and in doing so saved dozens of the twentieth century’s most enduring artworks from the Nazis. Through a deft combination of new scholarship and vivid storytelling, Hugh Eakin shows how two men and their obsession with Picasso changed the art world forever.
Kari Frederickson, Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama, The University of Alabama Press, Copyright Date 2022
From Reconstruction through the end of World War II, the Bankheads served as the principal architects of the political, economic, and cultural framework of Alabama and the greater South.
From Reconstruction through the end of World War II, the Bankheads served as the principal architects of the political, economic, and cultural framework of Alabama and the greater South. As a family, they were instrumental in fashioning the New South and the twentieth century American political economy, but now the Bankhead name is largely associated only with place names. Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama is a deeply researched epic family biography that reflects the complicated and evolving world inhabited by three generations of the extremely accomplished—if problematic—Bankhead family of northwest Alabama. Kari Frederickson’s expertly crafted account traces the careers of five members of the family—John Hollis Bankhead; his sons, John Hollis Bankhead Jr. and William Brockman Bankhead; his daughter, Marie Bankhead Owen; and his granddaughter, Tallulah Brockman Bankhead.
David Goodman and Joy Elizabeth Hayes, New Deal Radio: The Education Radio Project, Rutgers University Press, Publication Date: May 13, 2022
New Deal Radio examines the federal government’s involvement in broadcasting during the New Deal period, looking at the U.S. Office of Education’s Educational Radio Project.
New Deal Radio examines the federal government’s involvement in broadcasting during the New Deal period, looking at the U.S. Office of Education’s Educational Radio Project. The fact that the United States never developed a national public broadcaster, has remained a central problem of US broadcasting history. Rather than ponder what might have been, authors Joy Hayes and David Goodman look at what did happen. There was in fact a great deal of government involvement in broadcasting in the US before 1945 at local, state, and federal levels. Among the federal agencies on the air were the Department of Agriculture, the National Park Service, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Federal Theatre Project. Contextualizing the different series aired by the Educational Radio Project as part of a unified project about radio and citizenship is crucial to understanding them. New Deal Radio argues that this distinctive government commercial partnership amounted to a critical intervention in US broadcasting and an important chapter in the evolution of public radio in America.
David Pietrusza, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR’s 1936 Landslide and the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal,Diversion Books, Publication Date: June 2022
Boldly steering clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation weaves an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves.
Boldly steering clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation weaves an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves. With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America. Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation’s stakes were high . . . and the parallels hauntingly akin to today’s dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars.
Sara Rutkowski, Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers’ Project, University of Massachusetts Press, Publication Date: June 2022
Established in 1935, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) sent over 6,500 unemployed historians, teachers, writers, and librarians out to document America’s past and present in the midst of the Great Depression. The English poet W. H. Auden referred to this New Deal program as “one of the noblest and most absurd undertakings ever attempted by any state.”
Established in 1935, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) sent over 6,500 unemployed historians, teachers, writers, and librarians out to document America’s past and present in the midst of the Great Depression. The English poet W. H. Auden referred to this New Deal program as “one of the noblest and most absurd undertakings ever attempted by any state.” Featuring original work by scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this volume provides fresh insights into how this extraordinary program helped transform American culture. In addition to examining some of the major twentieth-century writers whose careers the FWP helped to launch—including Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Margaret Walker—Rewriting America presents new perspectives on the role of African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and women on the project. Essays also address how the project’s goals continue to resonate with contemporary realities in the midst of major economic and cultural upheaval.
Victoria W. Wolcott, Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, University of Chicago Press, Publication Date: April 21, 2022
Living in the Future reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement.
Living in the Future reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Utopian thinking is often dismissed as unrealistic, overly idealized, and flat-out impractical—in short, wholly divorced from the urgent conditions of daily life. This is perhaps especially true when the utopian ideal in question is reforming and repairing the United States’ bitter history of racial injustice. But as Victoria W. Wolcott provocatively argues, utopianism is actually the foundation of a rich and visionary worldview, one that specifically inspired the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement in ways that haven’t yet been fully understood or appreciated. Wolcott makes clear that the idealism and pragmatism of the Civil Rights Movement were grounded in nothing less than an intensely utopian yearning. Key figures of the time, from Martin Luther King Jr. and Pauli Murray to Father Divine and Howard Thurman, all shared a belief in a radical pacificism that was both specifically utopian and deeply engaged in changing the current conditions of the existing world. Living in the Future recasts the various strains of mid-twentieth-century civil rights activism in a utopian light, revealing the power of dreaming in a profound and concrete fashion, one that can be emulated in other times that are desperate for change, like today.
Gene Zubovich. Before the Religious Right: Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States, The University of Pennsylvania Press, Publication Date: March 22, 2022
When we think about religion and politics in the United States today, we think of conservative evangelicals. But for much of the twentieth century it was liberal Protestants who most profoundly shaped American politics.
When we think about religion and politics in the United States today, we think of conservative evangelicals. But for much of the twentieth century it was liberal Protestants who most profoundly shaped American politics. Leaders of this religious community wielded their influence to fight for social justice by lobbying for the New Deal, marching against segregation, and protesting the Vietnam War. Gene Zubovich shows that the important role of liberal Protestants in the battles over poverty, segregation, and U.S. foreign relations must be understood in a global context. Inspired by new transnational networks, ideas, and organizations, American liberal Protestants became some of the most important backers of the United Nations and early promoters of human rights. But they also saw local events from this global vantage point, concluding that a peaceful and just world order must begin at home. In the same way that the rise of the New Right cannot be understood apart from the mobilization of evangelicals, Zubovich shows that the rise of American liberalism in the twentieth century cannot be understood without a historical account of the global political mobilization of liberal Protestants.
Mary Jane Appel, Russell Lee: A Photographer’s Life and Legacy, Liveright Books in association with the Library of Congress, Publication Date: March 2, 2021
Honorable Mentions
William A. Link, Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World, University of North Carolina Press, Publication Date: October 14, 2021
Mary Jane Appel, Russell Lee: A Photographer’s Life and Legacy, Liveright Books in association with the Library of Congress, Publication Date: March 2, 2021
Scott Borchert, Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Publication Date: 6/15/2021
David Gates, Tennessee Post Office Murals, Post Office Fans, Publication Date: February 24, 2021
Thomas Guglielmo, Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America’s World War II Military, Oxford University, Publication Date: October 2021
Peter Hiller,The Life and Times of Jo Mora: Iconic Artist of the American West, Gibbs-Smith, Publication Date: April 20, 2021
Jonathan Levy, Ages of American Capitalism, Random House/Penguin Random House Publication Date: April 20, 2021
William A. Link, Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World, University of North Carolina Press, Publication Date: October 14, 2021
Maribel Morey,White Philanthropy: Carnegie Corporation’s An American Dilemma and the Making of a White World Order, University of North Carolina Press, Publication Date: November 9, 2021
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt, Harvard University Press, Publication Date: August 3, 2021
Wendy Van Wyck Good, Sisters in Art: The Biography of Margaret, Esther, and Helen Bruton, West Margin Press, Publication Date: October 26, 2021
Greg Zipes, Justice and Faith: The Frank Murphy Story, University of Michigan Press, Publication Date:April 26, 2021
Catherine W. Zipf,Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: American Architecture in the Depression Era, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Publication Date:January, 2021
