Roosevelt Administration Research Articles

Broken Circle: The Isolation of Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II*

On the night of 21–22 June 1941, two different crises converged, changing the outlook for Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency. German armies crashed into the Soviet Union. At nearly the same hour, forty-three-year-old Marguerite A. “Missy” LeHand, FDR's closest companion for two decades, was crippled by a stroke followed by a nervous breakdown. Roosevelt faced the challenges of a widened war at the moment when he lost a key member of his circle. Samuel I. Rosenman, a Roosevelt insider since the 1920s, pointed to LeHand as “the one indispensable person around the Executive Mansion and later around the White House.”1 He ranked her as “one of the five most important people in the U.S.”2 Indeed, LeHand operated as FDR's personal and political partner. As the New Dealer Raymond Moley put it, “Missy was as close to being a wife as he ever had—or could have.”3 Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes detailed how LeHand's strengths fit Roosevelt's needs. After war broke out in Europe, Ickes wrote,

J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists: fbi Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939-1945. By Douglas M. Charles. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007. x, 197 pp. Cloth, $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8142-1061-1. CD-ROM, $9.95, ISBN 978-0-8142-9140-5.)

In J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists Douglas M. Charles uses newly released Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) files to study with great precision the collaboration between the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and J. Edgar Hoover's fbi in a campaign to surveille, discredit, and, in a few cases, prosecute fdr's isolationist critics between the August 1939 outbreak of war in Europe and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Charles provides new insights and a wealth of information on what the historian Leo Ribuffo has felicitously called the “brown smear,” efforts by a broad coalition of interventionists to discredit isolationism by associating it with a supposed Nazi “fifth column” in the United States. The campaign culminated in that summa of the brown smear, John Roy Carlson's best seller of 1943, Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, and a sensational sedition trial of “fifth columnists” in 1944. Charles examines the fbi investigations of Charles Lindbergh; the America First Committee; senators Burton Wheeler, Gerald Nye, and David Walsh; and Congressman Hamilton Fish. He argues that in none of those cases did the fbi have sufficient grounds to conduct criminal investigations, although it might be argued that the Bureau had reason to investigate how Nazi propaganda had been sent under the congressional frank of some of those isolationist congressmen. Many investigations have been launched with less to go on than that, and, as Martin Luther pointed out, in law as in farming it is all a matter of whose ox is gored.

The Evolution of the Modern Rhetorical Presidency: A Critical Response

In his 2003 article on the evolution of presidential rhetoric, Teten finds three distinct time periods in the rhetorical presidency. Teten asserts that the modern rhetorical presidency is characterized by greater use of group words and shorter addresses and began with Woodrow Wilson. By expanding his analysis to all State of the Union addresses rather than a sample, I repeat the analysis of group word usage and show that the enduring change in rhetorical styles occurred during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration rather than Wilson's. This shift may be attributed to the advent of radio and other forms of mass media rather than the personal style of one particular president.

See America: WPA Posters and the Mapping of a New Deal Democracy

In September 1931, the American Automobile Association (AAA) announced a substantial boom in travel to the Western United States, with some of their travel bureaus reporting a fifty percent increase in the number of inquiries received over the previous year (Organized Motordom IO).1 The notice, which was printed in the organization's monthly magazine, credited the federal government with stimulating much of this tourism. It explained that federally subsidized highway and road construction, combined with improved motoring services and the low cost of vacationing in the national parks, encouraged motor travel.2 This tide of tourism, as the notice described it, continued under the Roosevelt administration, which sponsored a variety of roadbuilding programs and highway improvements in an attempt to spark the depression era economy. In addition to funding emergency road repairs, the administration subsidized the construction of new bridges and roads, as well as highways like Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Key West Overseas Highway. In addition to these projects, the government launched a series of promotions to encourage travel within the United States, including a see campaign. As a part of this initiative, the United States Travel Bureau commissioned the Federal Art Project (FAP) to create a number of posters promoting domestic travel. The series, which includes a large pictorial map of the United States and several smaller posters of specific tourist sites, equated tourism with a knowledge of the nation that extends beyond the topography of the land. Illustrating historical sites, popular cultural attractions, and natural landmarks, the series links national identity with a shared history as well as geography. In promoting destinations that represented the nation's past and present, the collection exemplifies the depression era search for a usable past that could ameliorate social tensions and unite Americans by recovering and affirming national values. Moreover, it equated the Native and African American to this seemingly authentic past while downplaying their respective roles in the modern nation-state and promoting a vision of America predicated on whiteness. While scholars have written extensively on other FAP projects, including prints produced by the FAP's graphic arts division, few have focused on the project's posters. Furthermore, what has been published offers little contextualization for the works beyond the circumstances surrounding their production.3 The FAP's poster division, which had units in over eighteen states by 1938, produced over two million posters in eight years and made a significant contribution to the depression era visual culture (DeNoon 13, 22; O'Conner 305). Moreover, these posters were displayed in schools, community centers, subways, and other public fora; they served as an important medium of communication for the Roosevelt administration. This article represents one part of a larger study addressing the significance of these posters within the broader cultural context of the depression era. Drawing from the growing body of literature on tourism and race, I address links between the FAP's see posters, the tourist industry, and racial performance. In addition, I argue that the series participated in a larger cultural dialogue surrounding the construction of national identity during the depression era. Tourism and the see Poster Series The surviving see posters were created by the New York City poster division of the FAP. The FAP was established in 1935 as a part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a re lief program designed to create jobs during the depression. The New York division, which was in operation between 1935 and 1943, was the first poster unit established by the Roosevelt administration (DeNoon 17). At the height of its production, the New York division employed approximately 35 designers, 20 printers, and 10-12 cutters (DeNoon 19). …

Why Is There No Social Democracy in America?

There's something about the New Deal that invites generational revision. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when liberalism still defined the parameters of public policy, historians celebrated the New Deal as the culmination of modern reform—the federal government's relentlessly pragmatic, strikingly successful response to the burdens of an industrial age. The fierce politics of the late 1960s shattered that interpretation. The New Deal was a terrible disappointment, said the era's younger historians, its grand promise undermined by the Roosevelt administration's refusal to confront capitalist power while embracing—even reinforcing—racial, gender, and class hierarchies.1

Unionizing the Trinity Portland Cement Company in Dallas, Texas, 1934-1939

1934-35, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration confronted a direct challenge to Section 7 (a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in Dallas, Texas. A local panel of the National Labor Relations Board established by the president through power given him by a congressional resolution in June 1934 ruled that the Trinity Portland Cement Company had to recognize the overwhelming desire of workers at the company's plant in Dallas to name Portland Cement Workers Union Number 1 93 1 o as their exclusive bargaining agent. Portland Cement Workers Union Number 193 10 was affiliated with the Texas State Federation of Labor (TSFL) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) . On December 10,1 934, however, the company notified the board that it refused to comply with the ruling.1 Although Trinity's workers had voted in favor of the union by a nearly unanimous margin of 150 to 2, company officials held out in defiance of the NIRA's labor provisions, hoping to retain their company union and reaffirm exclusive control over labor policies. Until January 1939, Trinity's workers battled an array of anti-union measures in an attempt to force the company to recognize their union and sign a collective bargaining agree-

“News is a Weapon”: Domestic Radio Propaganda and Broadcast Journalism in America, 1939–1944

On the morning of December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The United States Congress immediately reciprocated. Later that afternoon, President Roosevelt asked his press secretary, Stephen Early, to initiate actions assuring government control over one of America's existing commercial radio networks. Using material from the Roosevelt Library, the NBC Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Office of War Information papers, this article analyzes Roosevelt's request in the context of domestic radio propaganda planning at the start of the Second World War. It presents the first detailed account of the manner by which network executives successfully derailed the attempt to establish a domestic government radio network. Ultimately, the Roosevelt administration elected not to operate a domestic network for propaganda purposes because the commercial networks effectively performed that function. And the chief vehicle for conveying government-sanctioned (and censored) war-related information over the airwaves turned out not to be government propagandists, but rather the first generation of broadcast journalists.

Forrester Blanchard Washington and His Advocacy for African Americans in the New Deal

Forrester Blanchard Washington (1887-1963) was an African American social work pioneer recruited to the first New Deal administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as director of Negro Work in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. This role gave Washington a platform from which to object strenuously to the development of social policies that were predisposing African Americans to chronic dependence on welfare programs instead of creating equal opportunities for employment. Washington's policy analysis and recommendations represent social work's advocacy for equal employment opportunity long before the related civil rights legislation in the 1960s. An analysis is offered to explain Washington's decision to abort his federal career when the political agenda of the Roosevelt administration began to conflict with his values and professional goals. His actions are exemplary of resignation in protest--an aspect of advocacy more often discussed than used. This article is based on Washington's writings and materials found in the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland.

Cultural Democracy by Default: The Politics of the New Deal Arts Programmes

The federal arts programmes of the New Deal and the Communist Party's Popular Front strategy have both been presented in retrospect as relatively short-term and expedient policies, the first out of line with the general tendency of governmental relations with art production in the United States, and the latter with the Communist Party's revolutionary aspirations. Direct state patronage of the arts as an alternative to the market did not become part of the model of a democratic polity in the United States in any of the normal variants, and insofar as state patronage is associated with communism, it is equated with the Stalinist model of authoritarian control of culture and has no actual democratic component. In this view, the New Deal, which certainly had no programme for social revolution, inadvertently provided a space for communist propagandising in cultural guise, while the Communist Party saw the New Deal in terms essentially defined by Moscow as a temporary ally against fascism, and infiltrated the cultural institutions it established and used them for its own political ends. However, the short-term nature of the programmes and the Popular Front was not immediately evident to many participants at the time, and in fact both had to be given an ideological rationale that assumed a permanent shift in orientation. Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere, the specific appeal of neither was limited to the period of their operation: both had an ideological afterlife.1 Communists and fellow-travellers were able to work within the projects in part because of the genuine liberalism of administrators such as Edward Bruce, Holger Cahill, Hallie Flanagan and Henry Alsberg on the one hand, and because the Communist Party's cultural functionaries could provide a plausible view of why the projects were truly progressive on the other. Thus the areas of overlap between the ideologies of both sides – as well as the real divergences – deserve consideration. There are things to be learnt about both the political economy of the arts and the problems of cultural democracy from this exercise. In this essay I argue that the policies of both the Roosevelt administration and the Communist Party had unintended consequences in terms of popular empowerment, and that it was precisely because of this that they issued in something that offers object lessons for cultural democracy.

The War on Terror: Forgotten Lessons From World War II

Setting Priorities In World War II, the Roosevelt administration believed that Nazi Germany was its most dangerous opponent. Administration officials reasoned that only Germany could possibly conquer Great Britain, and Britain’s demise would open the whole Atlantic region to German dominion and leave the United States dangerously exposed. The administration therefore adopted a “Germany First” strategy, under which it focused its power first against Germany, while only checking Japan in Asia; and concentrated on defeating Japan only after Germany was beaten.3

German Antifascist Refugees in America and the Public Debate on “What Should be Done with Germany after Hitler,” 1941–1945

The debate over “what should be done with Germany after Hitler” became so intense in America in 1943–44 that competitive organizations were created to influence public opinion and official postwar planning. German refugees fought on both sides in the crossfire of opinion. Recent historical scholarship has discussed the failure of the German political emigration to gain formal political recognition from the United States government and the right to participate in Allied planning for postwar Germany. Though correct, this contention should not obscure the significant role that some of the anti-Nazi exiles played in framing the public debate on the treatment of Germany. They swam against the tide of extreme anti-German sentiments at the height of the Second World War, and their views found considerable resonance among American intellectuals. The public debate on the Allied policy for postwar Germany was more extensive than many historical accounts suggest in focusing on the proposals of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and the infighting within President Roosevelt's administration. German antifascist emigrants in America devised the arguments and rhetorical tools against the movement for a draconian peace long before the political controversy over the Morgenthau Plan in September 1944. Their contribution to the wartime debate on Germany's future helped to prepare Americans to accept the modification of Washington's tough policy for occupied Germany before the Cold War turned a onetime enemy into an ally. By the terms in which they cast this debate, they contributed also to the marginalization of the Holocaust in the wartime discourse on Germany more than historians have hitherto recognized.

Brinkmanship and Beyond: The Political Leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt

This article compares two legislative initiatives of President F. D. Roosevelt with the aim of finding an explanation for one of the failures of Roosevelt's presidency: his attempt to change the composition of the Supreme Court in 1937. Comparing Roosevelt's strategy and activities during the Court-packing crisis and drafting and processing the Lend-Lease act it can be concluded that the differences are not structural but gradual. In both cases he pushed the political system to the limits in about the same way, but in the Court-packing case this brinkmanship fails. Roosevelt misinterprets signals and misses good opportunities to come out of it a winner because of specific, and particular circumstances further explored in the article.

FDR and the Soviet Union: The President's Battles over Foreign Policy by Mary E. s> Glantz (review)

362 SEER, 85, 2, 2007 The authorhas adaptedhis title 'The Land of the White Dusk?' from that of Sir Paul Dukes's memoirsabout Soviet Russia, RedDuskandtheMorrow (London, I922). Fortunately, Finland experienced a happier morrow than Russia. Enormousprogresswas made during the 1920S and I930Sin building a democratic state in Finland. In I9I8-2I the nation was deeply divided; in 1939 Finland united to resist Soviet aggression. Berkhamsted J. E. 0. SCREEN Glantz, Mary E. FDRandtheSoviet Union: 7hePresident's Battles over Foreign Policy. Modern War Studies. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2005. Viii + 253 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?27.50. THE diplomatic battles identified by Mary Glantz that added to Franklin Roosevelt's burdens were between the president and those entrusted with carrying out his policy towards the Soviet Union. Glantz has undoubtedly made a distinct contribution to our understanding of the evolution of his policy in her wide-ranging, well researched and stimulatingstudy. Previous workshave focused on the makersof policy ratherthan its executors. Glantz makes effective use of an explanation of the tensions that can disrupt the businessof government offeredby Graham T. Allison, namely, that the main obstacle presidents must overcome is bureaucratic 'politics'. Glantz goes so far as to suggest that these struggles within the executive branch defined 'the formulation of United States-Soviet relations throughout Roosevelt's presidency' (pp. I, 35). Consequently,Glantz'sprime focus is on the machineryof governmentand the president's effort to modify it. These manoeuvres, she believes, offer 'a necessaryclue' (p. 2) to elucidatingthe enigmaticRoosevelt'smotives. She also gives due weight to the impact of militaryfactors on diplomatic calculations. The latterwould seem to be an obviousfactor,but the militarydimension has often been overlooked.The historiographyhas been influencedby an undue preoccupationwith diplomaticevents resultingfrom an obsessionwith seeking out the origins of the Cold War rather than illuminating the history of the Second World War. The basis of FDR's policy had been laid down before I939 thanks to the work of the Ambassador in Moscow, Joseph E. Davies, and the military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Philip R. Faymonville, who built up extensive contacts with the Soviet military. Their successors, Ambassadors Laurence Steinhardtand Admiral William H. Standley, and attaches Ivan Yeaton arid Joseph Michela, were much more hostile to the Soviet Union. They favoured a strictpolicy of reciprocity.Concessionsshouldbe demanded from the Soviet Union in return for any aid, and Soviet diplomats should be treated in the same way as the Americans, few of whom enjoyed their service in Moscow. Glantz argues that this group proved incapable of grasping the strategic importance of the Soviet Union within a broad internationalcontext. They allowed their anti-Sovietprejudicesto warp theirjudgment;Moscow Embassy staffunderestimatedthe importance of the Soviet Union as an ally. REVIEWS 363 Glantz explores the intellectuallegacy of Robert F. Kelley, the head of the State Department'sDivision of EastEuropeanAffairs.He chose and groomed an entire generation of Soviet experts that remained hostile to Roosevelt's policy of developing American-Soviet cooperation. Before I943 Roosevelt sought to hold the GrandAlliance together,mainly because of the vital Soviet contributionof pinning down the bulk of the Wehrmacht.He remainedwary of any compromisepeace that the Sovietsmight signwith Hitler, and thought reciprocity was a luxury the Western Allies could not afford. He was thus prepared to give the Soviet Union all the aid that it demanded. Roosevelt by-passedcriticsin the State Department and Moscow Embassyby sending a stream of special envoys to deal with Stalin directly, including Davies, Wendell Wilkie and W. Averell Harriman. He also by-passed the bureaucracyby creating the Office of Lend Lease Administration(OLLA),whose Moscow office for a time operated independently of the Embassyunder the direction of BrigadierGeneral Faymonville. Admiral Standley mounted a counter attack. He ambushed Davies at a Moscow press conference, having briefed the press against his predecessor. On 8 March I943 he denounced the Soviet Union and embarrassed Roosevelt, by claiming that the Kremlin was ungratefuland concealed from the Russian people the source of Lend Lease material. And Faymonville's reputation was besmirched when Michela had the FBI investigate him on 'moralscharges' (p. I35), that is, homosexuality. After I943 Roosevelt's dependence on the Soviet militarycontributiondid not diminish, as the Second Front could not be opened untilJune...

A Tale of Two Roosevelts: Review Essay

A Tale of Two Roosevelts Review Essay Saul Lerner Purdue University Calumet Saving Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Holocaust, by Robert N. Rosen. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006. 654 pp. $32.00. Roosevelt and Holocaust: A Rooseveltian Examines Policies and Remembers Times, by Robert L. Beir, with Brian Josepher. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2006. 324 pp. $26.95. In April, 2006, two volumes were published on subject of role played by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in rescue of Jews during Holocaust. One volume was Robert Rosen's Saving Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Holocaust; other, Robert L. Beir's Roosevelt and Holocaust: A Rooseveltian Examines Policies and Remembers Times. Remembering A Tale of Two Cities, one might well paraphrase Charles Dickens that Roosevelt's participation in rescue of Jews during Holocaust reflected the best of efforts, worst of Both books were written by loyal supporters of Franklin Roosevelt: one praises Roosevelt's efforts at rescue; other describes inadequacy of those efforts. Basing his work heavily on William Rubinstein's The Myth of Rescue: Why Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From Nazis (1997), Rosen takes view that writings of such historians as Arthur Morse (While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy [1967]), David Wyman (Paper Walls: America and Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941 [1968] and The Abandonment of Jews: America and Holocaust, 1941-1945 [1984]), Haskel Lookstein, Were We Our Brothers' Keepers? The Public Response of American Jews to Holocaust, 1938-1944 [1985]), and Henry Feingold (The Politics of Rescue: The United States and Holocaust, 1938-1945 [1970] and Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to Holocaust [1995]) were a conspiracy to undermine reputation of Roosevelt and American government. Rosen castigates these historians, seeks to set record straight, opposes allegation of apathy and indifference in U.S. response to Holocaust, and supports proposition that FDR and American government did all that they could possibly have done to rescue European Jews. After a lengthy discussion of why he has remained a Rooseveltian, Beir makes painfully clear that [t]he Holocaust tears me to shreds because rescue of Jews by American Jewish Community, State Department, Roosevelt Administration, and Roosevelt himself was unnecessarily deficient. Beir bases his analysis on writings of those same historians-Morse, Wyman, Lookstein, Feingold, and others-whom Rosen castigates. Both books are rather well written and, given that fact and importance of topic, should attract popular interest. Juxtaposing and analyzing both books together provides insight into historiography of American rescue and offers detailed information on response of United States to Hitler's persecution and extermination of Jews. The Rosen book only briefly covers early persecution, prior to 1938. Focusing on period after 1938 is somewhat problematic, for Rosen docs not document Roosevelt's response to early persecution by Nazis. Beir's book is much better at covering entire period of 1930s and 1940s and showing ways in which Roosevelt and his government could have been more committed to assisting Europe's Jews. Both Rosen and Beir books describe in detail climate of American opinion during period of administration of FDR. Both accounts document bigotry, antisemitism, terrible impact and fear of joblessness resulting from Grear Depression, hate mongering of German-American Bund and other groups, Father Coughlin, support of Nazi Germany by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, insensitivity to Jewish persecution by Congress, antisemitism of State Department, and many, many other occurrences, events, and individuals that constituted climate of opinion. …

FSA: the American vision

Between the World Wars, America's Great Depression spawned the need for many public works agencies, in particular the Farm Security Administration. Director Roy Stryker was invited by the Roosevelt administration to assemble a team of photographers, which included Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano and Gordon Parks, to document America's cultural and economic conditions. Although the archives are often consulted for a few nostalgic images, they have never been comprehensively anthologised. FSA: The American Vision gathers, for the first time, the FSA's catalogue of documentary photography - a collection of images so extraordinary that they set the standard for photojournalism for years afterward.

Bargaining Over a New Welfare State: A Model of the Regional Distribution of New Deal Funds

The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to develop an estimable model of legislative politics in the US Congress. Second, to provide a greater understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the theoretical model, the distribution of federal funds across regions of the country is the outcome of a bargaining game in which the President acts as the agenda-setter and Congress bargains over the final shape of the spending bill. For any given preferences (of the President) and distribution of seats in Congress, the model delivers a unique predicted allocation. Combined with data on New Deal programs, this is used to estimate the objectives of the Roosevelt administration. The results indicate that economic concerns for relief and recovery, though not necessarily for fundamental reform and development, largely drove New Deal spending. Political concerns also mattered, but more on the margin.

Forestry education and research in the United States: A story of shifting paradigms

Two past revolutions have particularly defined and changed education and research in the United States: the conservation movement culminating in the first Roosevelt administration just after the turn of the 20th century, and the environmental movement and legislation of the late 1960s and 70s. The National Forests in their modern form were created by Pinchot and Roosevelt in the early 20th century and the first comprehensive effort at creating a national research plan and program followed in the 1920s. Several federal laws passed in the latter period (1960–1975), particularly the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Protection Act, and the National Forest Management Act, did much to shape and change the research and education agenda. A third revolution in forestry education and research is now underway, and includes huge changes in forestland ownership, broadening of forestry curricula, and the re‐targeting of forestry research away from wood production and toward other benefits. Forestry education and research are becoming components of natural resource and environmental programs, traditional forestry employment modes are disappearing, and new opportunities are opening in relation to ecosystem services and forest‐related investment. Suggestions are made for specific changes in education and research, the most radical of which is to make forestry a graduate degree only.

Frederic Clements, climatology, and conservation in the 1930s

ABSTRACT The study of climate change has deep roots in the history of North American ecology. At the time of the Wall Street crash and the Depression of the 1930s, America .s Great Plains were struck by the Dust Bowl, a phenomenon of catastrophic soil erosion that resulted from the combined effects of intensive farming practices and a particularly harsh drought. Contemporaneously, the ecologist Frederic Clements proposed a theory of plant succession that itself took the history of the Great Plains as its model, and drew on the notion of climatic cycles. This theory became established as the model for ecological expertise in the politics of conservation adopted by the Roosevelt administration. In this paper, I will show how climatology became inscribed in plant ecology not only for epistemological reasons, but also due to an ideology that promoted the ecologist as an expert in the optimization of resources, in an illustration of the tripartite relationship between ecology, politics, and climate change.

Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn (review)

Reviewed by Kaimei Zheng University of Massachusetts Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn. By Peter Moreira. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006. 244 pp. $26.95. With more than five major Hemingway biographies in print, including Michael Reynolds's monumental work, Hemingway's life is more than an open book to the world. Therefore it's easy to dismiss any attempt to add to that life, let alone another book about Hemingway's three-month trip to China with Martha Gellhorn in 1941. Yet, when I thumbed through Moreira's book with its rich detail and copious references, both its depth and its style and tone drew my attention immediately. Moreira has obviously mined a significant chapter in Hemingway's life that all previous biographers have failed to probe. Hemingway on the China Front is neither a trip report nor a honeymoon journal; Moreira has extended Hemingway's biography significantly. Most of Hemingway's previous biographers used readily available resources such as Martha Gellhorn's book, Travels with Myself and Another, and Hemingway's PM articles collected in By-Line. Moreira, by contrast, sat in the New York Public Library and dug into Gellhorn's Collier's articles from the trip, which give a very different impression than the memories she recorded in Travels with Myself and Another thirty-seven years later. Over the course of ten years, Moreira went from library to library, box to box, from Asia to Europe, digging, weaving, and piecing together the puzzle. Meanwhile, the 2003 publication of Caroline Moorhead's biography of Martha Gellhorn opened another treasure box of information about Hemingway and Gellhorn's life together, including Gellhorn's miserable experience during their China trip and her correspondence about it. Moreira also dug into Hemingway's letters about the trip to Ralph Ingersoll, Maxwell Perkins, and other friends. A journalist by training who lived in Hong Kong for four years, Moreira has first-hand experience in the exact environment where Hemingway and Gellhorn spent a month fifty years earlier. Following Gellhorn's details, Moreira recreates the sensations and the images of the British Colony at the time—the smells, the light, the streets, the hotel itself—he even interviews [End Page 115] the hotel doorman from the period when Hemingway and Gellhorn stayed there. In China itself, Moreira recognizes the place where Hemingway stayed in Chengdu as the same place where Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, would live seventeen years later. Moreira not only paints a telling portrait of each person that Hemingway and Gellhorn met during the trip—whether British, Chinese, or American—but also includes a short biography that often leads to another significant figure or event in Sino-American history, wwii history, and/or Chinese modern history. Moreira's delightful, often provocative style carries the reader through the adventure of being in wartime China, and the action in the book is continuous. With his keen eye for details, Moreira takes readers with the Hemingways on a plane ride with a skilled American pilot over Japanese lines and on an unimaginably rough trip on the North River towards the front line. Moreira is the first one to read between the lines of Gellhorn's three publications about the trip, and he provides a telling judgment on her various revisions over time: the Collier's stories (1941), The Face of War (1959), and Travels with Myself and Another (1978). Working with Gellhorn's life and correspondence, Moreira analyzes the psychological path she traveled during those thirty-seven years. This is not only a book about a moment in Hemingway and Gellhorn's life together, it is also a book detailing Chinese history at the time. Moreira unravels several tangled aspects, including the Roosevelt administration's policy towards China during early wwii (particularly the roles of Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau), the history of Chinese Communism and the anti-Communist policy of Chiang Kai-Shek, together...

Public Health Nursing in Latin America

ABSTRACT This reprint of excerpts from an article printed in Public Health Nursing in February 1950 by Hazel O'Hara, a staff writer for the Institute of Inter‐American Affairs, describes the state of public health nursing in clinics operated under the cooperative health programs of the Institute of Inter‐American Affairs, in conjunction with governmental entities in Latin American countries and the United States federal government in the mid‐20th century. The Institute of Inter‐American Affairs was an important element of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America. Conceived by Nelson Rockefeller, Assistant Secretary of State in the Roosevelt administration, the program was delayed by the outbreak of World War II (NLM, 2005, June 22). O'Hara's colorful descriptions of jungle residents and poor residents of urban slums have been omitted because they reflect a past time and sensibility. The remaining information, however, is significant in understanding the development of public health nursing in countries where it had not previously existed, the expansion of the nursing workforce, and the creation of health centers that served communities to improve social conditions as well as health status.