THE WORLD THAT WASN'T

Comprehensive biography of a figure now largely forgotten but central to the history of the World War II–era Roosevelt administration.

Henry Wallace (1888-1965) was sharply intelligent, but “he also had great difficulty with social interactions…and he frequently failed to recognize even elementary cues as to people’s motivations and agendas,” writes Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. The agendas were many when he entered the administration as vice president. At heart a Midwestern farmer, he came to the office in the fraught years of World War II. Although Wallace’s interest was in foreign policy, writes Steil, he viewed it through the lens of agriculture and commerce, and when it was his task to negotiate trade and loan deals with the Soviet Union, a never quite trustworthy ally, he was inclined to generosity. Indeed, notes the author, Wallace was dogged throughout his years in office and afterward with the charge of being a communist, tracked by the FBI. There was some basis for the suspicion, for Wallace was steered into numerous positions by Soviet agents, to the consternation of other allies: “Opposed to the British Empire, and friendly to the Soviet one, Wallace was a constant source of concern in London.” Considering Wallace a detriment, Roosevelt selected another vice-presidential candidate to run with him in 1944, easing Wallace out. That moment has taken on layers of legend, which Steil deftly sorts through to distinguish truth from fiction. Within the Democratic Party, Steil observes, Wallace became the “unrivaled leader of the party’s liberal wing” and later broke to lead the Progressive Party, running against Harry Truman. Wallace’s politics became less doctrinaire late in life, when he endorsed Eisenhower for president and perhaps even voted for Nixon against Kennedy.

A welcome reconsideration of a much-misunderstood but important figure in American politics.