New Deal Failed the Economy It Was Trying to Save

Can you wage war against an economic downturn by attacking it like a military opponent? If so, can you win such a war? In "The New Deal," a blow-by-blow account of Roosevelt's campaign against the Great Depression, Michael Hiltzik implicitly answers both questions with a "yes." Mr. Hiltzik seems to be aiming to do for FDR and his Brains Trust what Doris Kearns Goodwin did in 2005 for Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet in "Team of Rivals": to explain how an able commander harnessed an improbably talented and obstreperous crew of advisers and steered them in an unprecedented direction, changing the character of America and rescuing it from crisis along the way.