FDR and the New Deal For Beginners

A graphic history of Franklin Roosevelt, his presidency, and his series of radical reforms that led the United States out of the Great Depression.

“An important experiment in comics as history, also a study of the grand reform era that readers need for today’s and tomorrow’s hopes. Get this book!” —Robert W. McChesney, co-author, The Death and Life of American Journalism

A profusely illustrated, popularly-written volume with original comic art, FDR and the New Deal For Beginners will shed new light upon a story now regaining visibility thanks to the recent economic crisis and prominent reformer, President Obama, in the White House.

The history of the precedent-making FDR administration through the bitter economic depression, with expansive programs empowering artists and working people, comes alive as the grandest social experiment in the history of American democracy. For the first time, the lives of the president, the first lady and the ordinary people of the time will be seen through an inventive comic narrative accompanying historic illustrations and a sympathetic but not uncritical text.

“The team of Buhle, Jones, and Pekhar illustrate the benefits of having a president who, whatever his limits, truly care about the welfare of working people. In elegant prose and dramatic pictures, they do more than make the past come alive; they make sense of if.” —Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of Williams Jennings Bryan, and professor of history, Georgetown University

“The incredibly farsighted and productive presidential career of Roosevelt is handled in smart, dramatic fashion in this long-overdue addition to Steerforth's impressive “For Beginners” line of introductions to concepts, thinkers, and historical events.” —Publishers Weekly