WHEN THE NEW DEAL WAS YOUNG AND GAY

This informal account of the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration, written by a New York Times correspondent of that period, attempts to render both a political and personal portrait of the President and his family. However, most of the book is devoted to a ""homely recounting,"" to use the author's phrase, of his experiences as a White House reporter. While he relates the events and describes the personalities of the New Deal era with reasonable objectivity, he fails to evoke the temper of one of the most critical and dramatic times in the nation's history. Glimpses of F.D.R.'s ""non-public"" personality, and of his close associations with his advisers, such as Louis Howe, are caught occasionally, but the total effect is of a book too superficial to be of significance either as journalism or as history. A light acount of an important era.