In this optimistic, lively and exceptionally well-written synthesis, Alan Lawson argues that the New Deal is best understood as the practical expression of the cooperative commonwealth ideal, as articulated by such late nineteenth-century thinkers as Laurence Gronlund (The Cooperative Commonwealth, 1884), Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 1889), and Henry Demerest Lloyd (Wealth and Commonwealth, 1894). Lawson suggests that New Deal reformers, having encountered and absorbed these authors' progressive ideas in their youth, and then witnessed the centralized direction of the economy during the First World War, used the opportunity presented them by the crisis of the Great Depression to launch a deliberate effort to create a new, more interdependent society.

Whereas Richard Hofstadter and many others have described the New Deal as a haphazard and ideologically incoherent project, Lawson insists that it was both purposeful and intellectually coherent. Accordingly, Lawson's FDR is principled and consistent in his commitment to reform. Not everyone will be convinced by Lawson's portrait, which draws impressively (albeit selectively) on Roosevelt's speeches to make its case, but it does offer a counterweight to the Machiavellian President depicted, for instance, in James MacGregor Burns's influential The Lion and the Fox (1956).

The great strength of this book is that interprets the New Deal through the eyes and ideas of the reformers who provided the ideological impetus for progressive change. But that is also its main weakness. Sympathetic to the New Dealers' aspirations, Lawson pays little attention to the question of who granted reformers democratic legitimacy, and how. The book does describe the emergence of the New Deal coalition, but does not consider in any depth how dependent the New Dealers were on the Democratic Party and, therefore, on its powerful conservative southern bloc.

It may be, too, that Lawson exaggerates the New Deal's inclusiveness. He refers approvingly throughout to the “Common Man” without probing the significance of its heroic celebration of manhood, or asking how it impacted on the Common Woman. Further, Lawson lauds the New Deal's contribution to civil rights without once mentioning the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

Despite these quibbles, A Commonwealth of Hope is a welcome addition to the historiography of the New Deal. Its argument is fresh, it is easy to read, and it is rounded off by an interesting and useful “essay on sources.” These qualities make it as appropriate and attractive to undergraduates as to more seasoned historians.