The Skimmer

Nothing to Fear By Adam Cohen

Penguin; 372 pages

A political neophyte, swept into power on campaign promises of change, takes office in the teeth of an economic catastrophe. Sound familiar? Cohen’s timely book, subtitled FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America, chronicles the period in which the newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an amenable Congress and a corps of hardworking advisers took America off the gold standard, secured the nation’s imperiled banking system, created the basis of the modern welfare state and fundamentally rewrote government’s role in the economy, all during a three-month sprint in early 1933. As a blueprint for political fast starts, Nothing to Fear might belong on the current President-elect’s night table, but it would make instructive reading for his advisers as well. While Roosevelt inspired and exhorted the nation, Cohen’s real focus is on Administration figures like Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace and Raymond Moley, FDR’s top adviser, who drafted much of the legislation that became the New Deal’s enduring legacy.

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