In the 1930s and 1940s a band of smart and able young men-Thomas G. Corcoran, Benjamin V. Cohen, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, and James Rowe-helped Franklin D. Roosevelt build the modern American state and a progressive political coalition that seemed invincible. These junior officers of the New Deal numbered among their favorite members of Congress the young Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. For thirty years, through LBJ's own presidency, they functioned as his intimate ''kitchen cabinet.''
Michael Janeway grew up with an insider view of these brokers of ideas and power because his father, economist and journalist Eliot Janeway, was a member of their circle. Janeway crafts a riveting account of how these men worked together to fuse reform impulses in the social sciences and law with political advancement. Can a progressive coalition of ideas and power come together again? The Fall of the House of Roosevelt makes such a prospect both alluring and daunting.
