Abstract

Books, Schlesinger: Right Crisis- Wrong Order, 1957, March, 23

This article focuses on the book "The Age of Roosevelt," vol. 1, "The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933," by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Readers will find paragraphs of keen analysis, sections of exciting and living description, and passages of moving evocation of attitudes and moods in the volume. The most brilliant portion is Schlesinger's dissection of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's character and temperament, and his outlook on Man and the world. This analysis not only provokes an abiding, bowel-stirring uneasiness about the American conception and practice of noblesse oblige, it leaves one in sadness that Schlesinger should have to mouth the banality about its being "subjective, of course."