The Politics Of Upheaval

Download or read book The Politics of Upheaval written by Arthur Meier Schlesinger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concluding years of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. A measure of economic recovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR's critics to denounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagogues -- Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. To his right were the champions of the old order -- ex-president Herbert Hoover, the American Liberty League, and the august Supreme Court. For a time, the New Deal seemed to lose its momentum. But in 1935 FDR rallied and produced a legislative record even more impressive than the Hundred Days of 1933 -- a set of statutes that transformed the social and economic landscape of American life. In 1936 FDR coasted to reelection on a landslide. Schlesinger has his usual touch with colorful personalities and draws a warmly sympathetic portrait of Alf M. Landon, the Republican candidate of 1936.