Hope Restored: How the New Deal Worked in Town and Country

In Hope Restored, Bernard Sternsher has assembled fourteen writings by historians which show how, even though the New Deal's initiatives did not always work, Franklin Roosevelt's program was a psychological and political success. It restored hope to communities across a battered nation. Mr. Sternsher's focus is not on Washington, D.C., but on what was happening at the local level across a vast and diverse nation--how people responded in Providence and Atlanta, Minneapolis and Hermosa Beach, Tampa and Pocatello. These local "snapshots" provide a much different composite portrait of the nation than an exclusively "top-down" view. They reveal the influence of local politics on the success of New Deal measures; the often surprising relations between various levels of governmental administration; the disregard for matters of ideology; and the varieties of experience under the New Deal.