Book review...

BOOK: "Nothing to Fear, FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America" by Adam Cohen, 2009.

As we all know, America can be divided historically into two time periods. One time period is "Before FDR" and one time period, the more fortunate era for us all, is "After FDR." Of course, after FDR and his huge jobs creation effort, America then had safety nets and prudent economic security measures for many Americans, including Social Security, FDIC, and others.

But before FDR, when the Great Depression almost collapsed the nation, with one-fourth of American workers without jobs, bank failures, farm foreclosures, soup lines and "Hoovervilles" involving needy and homeless people, the times were grim for Americans.

To get a sense of it, here is an excerpt from the "Nothing to Fear" book:
Edmund Wilson, the well-known writer, toured Chicago in 1932 and found a "sea of misery." On one stop, he saw an old Polish immigrant "dying of a tumor, with no heat in the house, on a cold day." In the city's flophouses, Wilson encountered "a great deal of tuberculosis" and "spinal meningitis." Worst of all were the garbage dumps, "diligently haunted by the hungry." In the summer heat, when "the flies were thick," a hundred people descended on one dump, "falling on the refuse as soon as the truck had pulled out and digging in it with sticks and hands." Even spoiled meat was claimed, since the desperate foragers could "cut out the worst parts" or "scald it and sprinkle it with soda to neutralize the taste and smell." A widowed housekeeper who was unable to find work showed up with her 14-year-old son. "Before she picked up the meat," Wilson wrote, "she would always take off her glasses so that she would not be able to see the maggots."