"The Hungry Years" above all serves as a philosophical keystone that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal sought to change governmental indifference into governmental action, attempted to create a symbiotic and caring relationship between the common person and government, and served to remind all Americans that activism in the name of justice and dignity is a pivotal characteristic in our national character. Watkins clearly analyzes the myriad of dreams, laws, acts, decisions and outcomes of the New Deal, and he is frank in discussing shortfalls and disappointments. Underlying the discussion, however, is his unabashed admiration for the tenor of the early years of FDR's adminstration. "For a time, millions of Americans -- white, black, and brown, male and female, urban and rural, young and old, white-collar and blue-collar -- had been given a sense of their own worth and power, the notion that by joining together they could control at least some portion of their lives, however imperfectly, however briefly."
This admirable volume rings with authenticity, primarily because the author so assiduously assembled anecdotes and interviews with those directly affected by the Great Depression. Human voices, laden with sadness and anger, ringing with rage at loss and suffering and growling with the ominous timbre of class war, appear on every page. These voices, magnificently interstitched with careful research (even his footnotes are written gracefully), control the book and serve to focus our attention on the human consequences of the era. Each chapter could stand on its own, but I found his discussion of artists, actors and writers in the New Deal absolutely rivetting, as were his astounding accounts of the impact of natural disaster on the geographic and emotional landscape of the land.
"The Hungry Years" will serve as an important example that history can read as literature and move readers in the same way as art. Satisfying intellectually and emotionally, "The Hungry Years" inspires historical imagination and furnishes us with a vision of a society not at odds with government, but aligned with a President who perceived that government's most serious and honored obligation is to alleviate suffering.