THE PRICE OF VISION: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942-1946

by Henry A. Wallace ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1973

The Henry Wallace diary does not glow with personal sociability or the looselipped irascibility of, say, the Ickes journal -- the highpoint of crusty New Deal tattletale. As editor Blum remarks, Wallace was ""a frank but never an intimate diarist."" But students of the Roosevelt war years will nonetheless heartily welcome and rush to read this sensitive and detailed accounting by a public servant who, as FDR's handpicked third-term Vice President and later Commerce Secretary into the Truman succession, actively participated in the momentous decisions of that crucial period -- from winning the war (while VP, Wallace headed the Board of Economic Warfare) and planning the postwar American occupation to the issues of atomic energy control and U.S. relations with the other great powers. What renders the diary a document of inestimable historical interest is not so much that Farmer Wallace (as he was derisively known in elite Washington) succeeded in pressing his enlightened and often prescient views on his compatriots (indeed, he largely failed -- we did enter the Cold War which he opposed, we did not share atomic information which he urged) but that he explicates as completely as an insider can the internal decision-making process established and manipulated by Roosevelt and the early Truman. Henry Wallace's reputation is not bright today, dimmed by the ill-advised run for the presidency in 1948 and the subsequent pinko tag. What must be considered here, however, is not Wallace's political acuity or lack thereof, but that he was an intelligent, faithful witness to signal events which we have come to recognize as a flashpoint in the American experience.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION