Something to Fear: FDR and the Foundations of American Insecurity, 1912-1945
Ira Chernus, "Something to Fear: FDR and the Foundations of American Insecurity, 1912-1945"
English | ISBN: 0700635645 | 2023 | 344 pages | EPUB | 1522 KB
English | ISBN: 0700635645 | 2023 | 344 pages | EPUB | 1522 KB
A presidency unlike any other, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy in foreign affairs has been contested since the day of his passing. Few presidential statements have echoed through history like FDR’s charge to conquer “fear itself.” Yet immediately after the end of World War II, the United States was gripped by a pervasive sense of national insecurity.
In Something to Fear, Ira Chernus and Randall Fowler demonstrate that Roosevelt’s rhetoric, vision, and policies promoted a broadly defined sense of American security over a period of thirty-three years, ultimately helping elevate security to its primacy in US political discourse by the end of his presidency. In doing so, however, he also heightened the prominence of insecurity in American public life, mediating the United States’ transition to superpower status in a way that also elevated fear in debates over foreign affairs.
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