The President Makers

THAT the New Deal is not such a break with the American past as is sometimes believed is one of the strongest impressions conveyed by this lively and informative narrative of personalities and political and economic forces during the period which began with McKinley and ended with Woodrow Wilson. Before the period of conservatism typified by Harding and Coolidge there had been the ‘Square Deal’ of Theodore Roosevelt and the ‘New Freedom’ of Woodrow Wilson. Indeed the thread of unity in Mr. Josephson’s work is not so much a description of the ‘ President makers,’ although there is a well-rounded sketch of Colonel House, as the constant besetting problem of finding an equilibrium between the premises and promises of political democracy and the concentration of great industrial and financial power in a very few hands. Besides retelling the main events of the period in a pleasant readable style, Mr. Josephson brings out a number of lessknown facts. He emphasizes the intellectual debt of Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Croly and of Woodrow Wilson to Louis Brandeis.