Venn has interesting points to make regarding the tendency of writers to subdivide the era into the ‘First’ and ‘Second’ New Deal periods, suggesting this division may be somewhat artificial and overstated. Her appraisal of Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, is nicely balanced and manages to avoid the two polar opposites between which accounts of this luckless President normally swing. Hoover is not ‘demonised’ here, as he was by pro-Roosevelt liberal historians in the mid-late twentieth century, but neither is he represented in his revisionist guise as an unwitting progenitor of the New Deal (an image which would have appalled Hoover himself).

Overall, Venn’s text is a neat summary, effectively explaining the most famous New Deal innovations (such as the CCC and AAA) whilst not omitting accounts of administration attitudes toward blacks and women. Its cross-disciplinary focus also enables the author to include the New Deal’s impact on the arts through the Federal Theatre Project and Federal Art Project.

Fiona Venn has produced a readable and intelligent introduction to the New Deal era which students and lecturers would be well-advised to purchase.