Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, by David Austin Walsh, Yale University Press, 320 pages, $35
"It's the cleanest, neatnest [sic] operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious." When Rexford Tugwell, an adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, wrote these words in 1934, he was not referring to the New Deal programs in his purview. He was recording his thoughts on fascist Italy while awaiting an audience with Benito Mussolini. Tugwell reacted with similar awe upon touring the Soviet Union in 1928, penning an essay urging Americans to reflect on what they might adapt from Josef Stalin's "experiment."
