Book Reviews

When in 1953 right-wingers sought to destroy Anton Refregier’s great mural cycle at Rincon Annex Post Office as “Un-American,” San Francisco’s art and political establishment united to successfully defend the iconic work—a masterpiece of New Deal social realism. Refregier, a Russian immigrant, painted the 27 murals that comprise the “History ...

In a 1935 interview, The San Francisco Chronicle quoted New Deal artist Victor Arnautoff, who said, "As I see it, the artist is a critic of society.” In a new biography of Arnautoff, (1896 –1979), Robert Cherny recounts the political events that shaped the artist’s life and found expression through his ...

As a through hiker on the Appalachian Trail some years back, David W. Gates Jr. would stop to pick up the supplies he had mailed to himself at the tiny post offices along the route that were his lifeline during his 6-month, 2,176-mile trek through 14 states. He’s been photographing ...

Eric Rauchway opens his new book Winter War with the near-miss assassination of President-elect Franklin Roosevelt on February 15, 1933, less than three weeks before his inauguration. If the bullet had found its mark, the U.S. would have had President John Garner, no New Deal, and very likely a total ...

Professor Waller is clearly an enthusiast of the CCC and knowledgeable about its many legacies to South Carolina. His extensive study of the C’s national newsletter, Happy Days, as well as the rare newsletters published by each camp, makes him a congenial guide to how CCC camps functioned and how ...

I recently plucked a book off the shelf of my library and found the answer to a question I’m often asked: How did you discover the New Deal? I first read Phoebe Cutler’s pioneering book The Public Landscape of the New Deal shortly after it was published more than thirty years ...

Over three years Jason Reblando, a Chicago artist and photographer, trained his camera on three Greenbelt towns — Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin— constructed during the Depression to house poor Americans, many of them displaced from the Dust Bowl. Rexford Tugwell, a Columbia economics professor tapped to head FDR’s ...

“The 1930s was the most creative period in American cultural life” claimed actress Toby Cole when I interviewed her shortly before her death at 92. I thought she was exaggerating because she had worked for the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) during the New Deal.  But after reading Susan Rubenstein DeMasi’s ...

In We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America, Charles Peters considers the tectonic social shifts he has seen in his lifetime--one that included attending Columbia on the GI Bill, serving in the West Virginia Legislature, working on JFK’s presidential campaign, helping found the Peace Corps, and ...

As a lifelong Californian, the name La Guardia meant little to me other than an airport and a bronze plaque I once saw at Brooklyn College. That was until I read Mason Williams revelatory book, City of Ambition, about the extraordinarily productive and improbable partnership of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ...