Harry Hopkins

November 3, 2014
With a detailed, practical analysis of one of the most accomplished power brokers in F.D.R.'s New Deal administration, O' Sullivan, a professor of history and international studies at the University of San Francisco, focuses on Harry Hopkins, the president's confidant and catalyst for much of the era's liberal policies providing government relief and public work jobs such as the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. Hopkins, a former social worker and an early F.D.R. appointee, believed relief was a citizen's right in the economic doldrums of the Great Depression, and while operating more than $10 billion in agency budgets he became the "world's largest employer, with more than fifteen million people working in various programs he ran." O'Sullivan shows the significant influence he had with the president, serving as an envoy with Churchill and Stalin during crucial moments during WWII. A key feature of the Hopkins saga is the revelation of his private self: a driven and purposeful personality, he was cool under fire and very calculating in his political choices. O' Sullivan's striking portrait captures the life of a resourceful man who did the grunt work for a chief executive whose vision shaped modern American politics.