Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945

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Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
First edition cover
AuthorDavid M. Kennedy
SeriesThe Oxford History of the United States
GenreNarrative history
PublishedMay 1999
PublisherOxford University Press
Media typePrint
Pages954
ISBN978-0-19-503834-7
Followed byGrand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 is a 1999 nonfiction book by the American historian David M. Kennedy. Published as part of the Oxford History of the United States, Freedom from Fear covers the history of the United States during the Great Depression and World War II.

Background[edit]

Book publisher Oxford University Press produces "Oxford histories", a line of book series usually intended to broadly synthesize historical topics.[1] In 1961, historians Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward began co-editing the Oxford History of the United States.[2] Hofstadter died in 1970,[3] before the series published any books.[4] The press publicly announced in 1970 that the Oxford History of the United States series was forthcoming and that a series volume about the New Deal would be written by historian Ernest R. May.[5]

By 1982, when the series published its first volume—The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789—and issued another list of projected titles with their authors, historian David M. Kennedy had replaced May.[6] At the time, Kennedy was a professor of history at Stanford University and had authored the 1980 Over Here: The First World War and American Society.[7] Kennedy's own parents had lived through the Great Depression.[8] Growing up, his family had attributed the Depression to United States president Herbert Hoover, calling it the "Hoover Depression".[9]

In an interview, Kennedy explained that in writing Freedom from Fear he focused on synthesizing existing scholarship and did not travel to archives for research.[9] Chapter manuscripts for Kennedy's volume met Woodward's resounding approval, though in July 1998 he advised Kennedy to shorten certain portions of the nearly 1,000-page manuscript.[10]

Publication[edit]

Oxford University Press published Freedom from Fear as part of the Oxford History of the United States in May 1999.[11] The book is 954 pages long,[12] and it weighs approximately six pounds.[13] There are 24 maps of battles,[14] 48 halftone images,[15] a bibliographic essay,[16] and a 59-page index.[17] On release, Freedom from Fear sold for $39.95 (USD, equivalent to $73 in 2023)[18][a] or £30 (GBP, equivalent to $55 in 2021).[20]

Content[edit]

Book outline by chapters[21]
Chapters Topic
1–3 Presidency of Herbert Hoover
4–7 Early presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt
8–12 New Deal between 1935 and 1938
13–15 Foreign relations of the United States until 1941
16–22 Military history of the United States during World War II

Freedom from Fear narrates the history of the United States during the Great Depression and World War II.[22] It opens on a vignette of Adolf Hitler as a lance corporal at the end of World War I and ends by narrating a nuclear weapons test in the Soviet Union and Maoism's ascent to political power in China.[23] The book is split across two halves: the first 400 pages cover the Great Depression in the United States and the New Deal,[b] from 1929 to 1939, and the second half covers United States history during World War II across about 500 pages.[25] In historian Mark Leff's words, Freedom from Fear is "essentially… two books, each of which would require almost no revision to stand alone".[26] The book mostly focuses on high politics, statecraft, military history, and diplomacy.[27] There is one chapter about race and one chapter about labor history.[28] Freedom from Fear contains little content about social history,[29] cultural history, or the history of religion.[17]

American president Franklin D. Roosevelt predominates as the lead figure in Freedom from Fear.[30] Kennedy depicts Roosevelt as having been a "truly brilliant politician with the skills to inspire, manipulate, and bend people", Booklist summarizes.[31]

Reception[edit]

Freedom from Fear received acclaim upon its release. According to historian William Rubinstein, the book is "a highly successful, vivid, and fair narrative account".[32] Journalist Rick Perlstein praised its "colorful details and the clanking, large-geared narrative engine" and argued that one "could even call it beach reading".[23] The Los Angeles Times averred that "[e]ven those who thought they knew it all, or who indeed lived through all or most of those years, will find illuminating information and insights on almost every page" of Freedom from Fear.[33] The New York Times Book Review declared it "the best one-volume account of the Roosevelt era currently available".[34] Historian Thomas Blantz considered it a "book for all readers", arguing lay audiences would appreciate the "absorbing story" and scholars would "find it a balanced review" of research on the era.[35] Publishers Weekly's review called Freedom from Fear "the definitive history of the most important decades of the American century".[36]

Reviewers criticized the selectiveness of Freedom of Fear's coverage. The Journal of American History called the subtitle, The American People, a "curious choice" because "the 'American people' appear with conspicuous infrequency", as Freedom from Fear has "a traditional cast, encompassing women but not gender, ethnics but not ethnicity".[26] Writing for The New Leader, historian David Oshinsky wrote that "ordinary Americans… too often appear as passive victims of injustice, poverty and pain", leaving the impression that social change happened only because of leaders, without the input of the public.[37] According to historian Harvard Sitkoff, "women are all but invisible" in the book, with only twenty women named in the entire index.[17] The New York Times Book Review reported that although Kennedy does "consider minorities and women" in the book, they are "decidedly secondary to his story" in which "[d]ead white males predominate".[34] Oshinsky criticized the book's inattention to popular culture,[37] and the Book Review stated that "American culture, particularly popular culture, is all but ignored".[34]

Freedom from Fear received four book prizes in 2000. These were the Pulitzer Prize for History,[38] the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal.[39]

Editions[edit]

  • Kennedy, David M. (1999). Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195038347.
  • — (2003). The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, Part One (Paperback ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195168921.
  • — (2003). The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, Part Two (Paperback ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195168938.
  • — (2010). Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. Narrated by Tom Weiner (Audiobook ed.). Blackstone Audio.

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ The Library Journal and Commentary reported that Freedom from Fear sold for $45 (USD, equivalent to $82 in 2023).[19]
  2. ^ The coverage of the New Deal specifically encompass approximately one third of the total book.[24]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Van Heyningen (1986, p. 298).
  2. ^ Cobb (2022, p. 264).
  3. ^ Cobb (2022, p. 374).
  4. ^ Burnard (2011, p. 410).
  5. ^ Cobb (2022, p. 374).
  6. ^ Cobb (2022, p. 375).
  7. ^ Gale Literature (2014, paragraph 2, section "Writings").
  8. ^ Perlstein (1999, paragraphs 3–4).
  9. ^ a b Kennedy (2001, p. 14.3).
  10. ^ Cobb (2022, pp. 380–381).
  11. ^ Kirkus (1999).
  12. ^ 936 are paginated with Arabic numerals and 18 (xviii) are paginated with Roman numerals. See Boyle (2000, p. 108); Davies (2000, p. 598); Rubinstein (2000, p. 60).
  13. ^ Sitkoff (2000, p. 954).
  14. ^ Ellis (2001, p. 555).
  15. ^ Publishers Weekly (1999, p. 227).
  16. ^ Story (2000, p. 87).
  17. ^ a b c Sitkoff (2000, p. 955).
  18. ^ Freeman (1999, p. 1286); Lang (2000, p. 449); Nenneman (1999, p. 16); Oshinsky (1999, p. 5).
  19. ^ Nardini (1999, p. 94); Valiunas (1999, p. 51).
  20. ^ Ellis (2001, p. 553); Rubinstein (2000, p. 60).
  21. ^ Story (2000, p. 87).
  22. ^ Zelikow (1999, p. 149).
  23. ^ a b Perlstein (1999, paragraph 2).
  24. ^ Ellis (2001, p. 553).
  25. ^ Blumberg (2000, p. 155); Davies (2000, p. 600); Sitkoff (2000, p. 955).
  26. ^ a b Leff (2000, p. 723).
  27. ^ Lang (2000, p. 450); Leff (2000, p. 723).
  28. ^ Lang (2000, p. 450).
  29. ^ Blantz (1999, paragraph 11).
  30. ^ Freeman (1999, p. 1286); Nenneman (1999, p. 16).
  31. ^ Freeman (1999, p. 1286).
  32. ^ Rubinstein (2000, p. 60).
  33. ^ Day (2000, p. BR10).
  34. ^ a b c Gewen (1999, p. 16).
  35. ^ Blantz (1999, paragraph 1).
  36. ^ Publishers Weekly (1999, p. 227).
  37. ^ a b Oshinsky (1999, p. 6).
  38. ^ Weeks (2000, p. C1).
  39. ^ Gale Literature (2014, paragraph 3).

Bibliography[edit]

Books[edit]

  • Cobb, James C. (2022). C. Vann Woodward: America's Historian. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-7021-8.
  • Katznelson, Ira (2013). Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-0-87140-450-3.

Journals[edit]

Magazines[edit]

Newspapers[edit]

Online[edit]

External links[edit]

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