In the suffering and poverty of the Great Depression, American morale received a shock as powerful as the economic collapse. Many Americans who had nurtured a deep faith in democracy, hard work, and a free economy suddenly found themselves questioning their system. Others feared that in combating the Depression, democracy might give way to the totalitarianism of the left or right. In , Bernard Sternsher has assembled fourteen writings by historians that show how, even though the New Deal’s initiatives did not always work, FDR’s program was a psychological and political success. It restored hope to a battered nation. Mr. Sternsher’s focus is not on Washington, D.C., but on what was happening at the local level across a vast and diverse nation—how people responded in Providence and Atlanta, Minneapolis and Hermosa Beach. These snapshots provide a much different composite portrait of the nation than an exclusively “top-down” view. They reveal the influence of local politics on the success of New Deal measures; the often surprising relations between various levels of governmental administration; the disregard for matters of ideology; and the varieties of experience under the New Deal. Like Mr. Stersher’s earlier book, , this one describes the workings of the New Deal on a scale we can all comprehend.