MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewJacobsen points an accusing finger at the doctrine of deterrence, which has been America’s governing policy for decades ... So far, so good (or bad), but it is at this point that the questions begin. What is her Plan B? If she favors abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, she owes it to her readers to say so, and then explain how it could be done.
David M Kennedy
RaveThe New York Times Book Review[Kennedy\'s Freedom From Fear] provides us with an engrossing narrative of a momentous time, the best one-volume account of the Roosevelt era currently available ... Kennedy is concerned with the big political, economic and military questions, the large decisions, who made them and why. Dead white males predominate. Not that Kennedy fails to consider minorities and women...but these fashionable topics are decidedly secondary to his story ... American culture, particularly popular culture, is all but ignored. Yet...he is still able to soldier along with dramatic discussions of the Great Depression, the New Deal, the rise of the totalitarians and World War II. Indeed, with event piling on history-making event, Freedom From Fear is, despite its 936-page length, a miracle of compression ... for sheer drama, nothing can top his pages describing how a basically isolationist nation entered the war in the first place. They are the high point of Freedom From Fear.
