When Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election,
they represented not only different political parties but vastly
different approaches to the question of the day: How could the nation
recover from the Great Depression? As historian Eric Rauchway shows
in Winter War, FDR laid out coherent, far-ranging plans for
the New Deal in the months prior to his inauguration. Meanwhile,
still-President Hoover, worried about FDR's abilities and afraid of
the president-elect's policies, became the first comprehensive critic
of the New Deal. Thus, even before FDR took office, both the
principles of the welfare state, and reaction against it, had already
taken form. Winter War reveals how, in the months before the
hundred days, FDR and Hoover battled over ideas and shaped the
divisive politics of the twentieth century.
