The Audacity of Despair

Few topics have been covered in such depth by academic and popular authors as the topic of Fear Itself: the New Deal and “the origins of our time.” Indeed, Ira Katznelson asks: what is left to say, and especially at such length, about such a well-worn furrow? His answer is a lot more than you would think, especially when seen from a rather unusual angle. The clue to that angle lies in the title. Fear Itself is necessarily a big book because Katznelson wants to give us a big picture—not just of the many tortured and unsavory relationships that made the New Deal possible, of dalliances with fascists and alliances with racists and communists, but also of the evolution of the U.S. state and, by extension, of democratic capitalism around the world. Yet more than this, the book is at heart an examination of the role played by fear as a driver of institutional and political change in democratic politics.